Tuesday, April 23, 2024
4/23/2024
Project Name: Montefiore Medical Center Supporting Healthy Relationships Program Organization and Grantee Name: Montefiore Medical Center Authorizing Official's Name: Geoffrey Browne, gebrowne@montefiore.org Principal Investigator's Name: Scott Wetzler, Ph.D., swetzler@montefiore.org, 929-234-4783 Program Director's Name: Traci Maynigo, Psy.D., tmaynigo@montefiore.org, 347-920-1655 Address: 111 E. 210th St., Bronx, NY 10467 Web Site Address: www.cmocares.org/SHR Montefiore Medical Center is proposing continuation of a large scope program to continue to promote healthy marriage by providing marriage and relationship education/skills activities to low-income adult (18 years or older) married and unmarried couples with custodial children (biological, adopted, fostered who are 18 years or younger) or expectant parents in the Bronx. Our program model is based on the premise that relationship skills can be taught, that developing good communication skills is beneficial to everyone, and that everyone should make the effort to get their relationships into shape just like they should try to get their bodies in shape through exercise. Ours is a preventative and educational program, not interventional or psychotherapeutic. The target population of low-income couples in the Bronx lack models of healthy marriage and are subject to numerous stressors that make their relationships especially fragile and unstable. Stressors include financial difficulties, un- and under-employment, and immediate and extended family pressures. We believe that relationship and parenting education, coupled with access to services that address these stressors, support and strengthen fragile relationships. We propose to provide core relationship education workshops using two empirically supported curricula: Bringing Baby Home and PREP 8.0 as well as numerous supplemental activities to promote healthy marriage. These curricula address communication skills, conflict resolution, knowledge of the benefits of marriage, parenting and co-parenting. Montefiore is also proposing to provide job-driven employment activities. In total, we expect to enroll 1,475 couples in the program and provide an average of 25 hours of total programming per couple (including 20 primary workshop hours), which we believe is a sufficient dosage to detect impacts. We estimate that at least 1180 couples (2,360 clients) will receive 90% of primary workshop hours in Year 2. As with our prior rel ationship education programs, we expect to find improvements in emotional intelligence, relationship knowledge, relationship satisfaction, and communication; and reductions in negative interactions and relationship distress; but in addition, we expect to find, as we did in the Parents and Children Together (PACT) evaluation, that relationship education improves marital stability, employment, and earnings. Finally, Montefiore also proposes to conduct a local evaluation to study the implementation of relationship education using Zoom video technology so that couples can participate remotely. We propose a randomized control trial design where couples are assigned to Zoom or In-Person workshops, using the same curricula. We hypothesize that the Zoom workshops will be equally effective and impactful as the In-Person workshops. Given the limitations due to COVID-19, we will be providing our services only via Zoom until state and local authorities determine that it is safe to provide services to groups in-person. Therefore, we will not begin randomization until that time.
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