Evaluation of Parent Toolkit 2.0: A sexual health program focused on parent-teen communication - Child Trends, with our partners at the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSoM), propose to rigorously evaluate Parent Toolkit 2.0, an innovative intervention for parents and caregivers of middle and high school youth that was tested and adapted through an OPA Innovation Network grant. The program includes three components delivered across a three-week period: (1) an online self-paced Parent Guide that has information, tips, tools, and resources on topics related to adolescent health, including sexual health; (2) four videos modeling parent-teen communication around sex and contraception; and (3) two group-based sessions for parent participants to discuss program content and enhance communication skills. The program is designed to increase parent knowledge and improve parent-teen communication about adolescent health, sexual health, and relationships, ultimately helping youth adopt health promoting behaviors, including reductions in sexual activity and increases in contraceptive use. Findings from MSoM’s research, as part the OPA Innovative Network, demonstrate support for the program from parents in priority communities and provide initial evidence of effectiveness in expanding parents’ comfort in communicating with their teens about sexual and reproductive health topics. The overarching goal of this project is to reduce disparities in unintended adolescent pregnancy and STIs by piloting and rigorously evaluating the impact of Parent Toolkit 2.0 on adolescent sexual activity, contraceptive use, and key mediators, and disseminating findings, along with the packaged intervention. The target population for this study is primarily African American parents with teens (all genders) ages 13 to 16 years old living in central, north, and southeast Georgia, which includes many rural counties. In Georgia, there are clear disparities in young people’s sexual and reproductive health outcomes by race/ethnicity and rural locality, making it an ideal location to evaluate a program focused on improving health promoting behaviors among youth. The proposed project team is well-equipped to implement and evaluate Parent Toolkit 2.0. Child Trends has a strong track record of successfully managing multi-component projects and rigorously evaluating teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) interventions for federal funders. Child Trends evaluators have demonstrated expertise in impact and implementation evaluation methods, achieving high sample retention, managing and analyzing data, and disseminating findings. Child Trends and MSoM will also collaborate with Good Deeds Ministries and Tressa Tucker & Associates, LLC, to further enhance implementation and evaluation efforts. MSoM and partner Good Deeds Ministries have extensive experience conducting programs with parents and youth in the priority communities and are prepared to recruit 1,000 teen-parent dyads for the study. Tressa Tucker & Associates, LLC, also has experience providing local evaluation support to MSoM across multiple projects, including conducting formative research on Parent Toolkit 2.0. Parenting curricula have the potential to fill an unmet need in TPP programming and can affect not only individual adolescents, but also their families and broader community. This evaluation will expand limited evidence currently available on the impact of parenting programs on adolescent sexual health. The estimated number of people to be served as a result of the award of this grant is 500.
