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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Linda Bailey-Stone, BS¹, Beth Lasater, MSPH¹, Olivia Ashley, Dr PH¹, David Heller, BS¹, Mindy Herman-Stahl, PhD¹, Karl Bauman, PhD¹, David Roe, MA¹, Michael Bradshaw, BS¹, Paula Jones, BS¹, and Kelly Arey, MAA². (1) RTI International, PO Box 12194, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-1294, 919-541-6853, owls@rti.org, (2) Corporation for National and Community Service, 1201 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20525

Despite evidence of parents' influence on children's substance use, effectiveness of parent-led prevention groups has not been fully evaluated. The Parent Corps, a priority in the 2003 National Drug Control Strategy, is a network of parent substance use prevention groups. This presentation describes an evaluation of the Parent Corps funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service, presents program implementation data and baseline data, and discusses treatment/control contamination potential. The randomized controlled evaluation assesses the impact of the Parent Corps, and implementation was assessed at 20 schools in 10 states. Implementation data collected through mail surveys from 19 parent leaders and 20 parent volunteers suggest the program is driven by paid female parent leaders and female volunteers who recruit parents at school and home by telephone and e-mail. Each parent leader recruited and trained a median of 35 parent volunteers. As of December 2005, about one-third of parent volunteers were still active. Parent volunteers reported spending little time on program activities; only half recruited other parents into the program, and few formed parent groups. Baseline data collected via household telephone interviews with 1,686 parents and their adolescents show treatment and control groups of adolescents were similar regarding adolescent lifetime substance use and demographic characteristics, except adolescent gender. However, 42% of parents surveyed reported knowing parents at schools in the opposite study condition. This potential contamination issue and lack of program delivery are threats to the ability of the evaluation to detect statistically significant differences between treatment/control schools.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the Parent Corps evaluation design
• Discuss program implementation and baseline findings
• Describe treatment/control contamination issues and identify lessons learned from this prevention effort and randomized controlled study

Keywords: Adolescents, Substance Abuse Prevention

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered