Mary S. Marczak

Feasibility of a parenting program to prevent substance use among Latino youth: a community-based participatory research study.

Purpose. Family-skills training programs prevent adolescent substance use, but few exist for immigrant Latino families. This study assesses the feasibility of a family-skills training intervention developed using a community-based participatory research framework, and explores parental traditional values as a modifier of preliminary effects. Design. One-group pretest-posttest. Setting. Four Latino youth–serving sites (school, clinic, church, social-service agency). Subjects. Immigrant Latino parents of adolescents aged 10 to 14 years (N = 83). Intervention. Eight-session program in Spanish to improve parenting practices and parent-youth interpersonal relations designed with Latino parents and staff from collaborating organizations. Measures. Feasibility was assessed through retention, program appropriateness, and group interaction quality. Preliminary outcomes evaluated were (1) parenting self-efficacy, discipline, harsh parenting, monitoring, conflict, attachment, acceptance, and involvement, and (2) parent perception of adolescent internalizing, externalizing, and substance use behaviors. Covariates included sociodemographics and parental endorsement of traditional values. Analysis. Feasibility outcomes were assessed with descriptive statistics. Paired t-tests measured changes in parenting outcomes. Adjusted multiple regression models were conducted for change in each outcome, and t-tests compared mean changes in outcomes between parents with high and low traditional values scores. Results. Program appropriateness and group interaction scores were positive. Improvement was noted for eight parenting outcomes. Parents perceived that adolescent internalizing behaviors decreased. Parents with lower endorsement of traditional values showed greater pretest-posttest change in attachment, acceptance, and involvement. Conclusion. This intervention is feasible and may influence parenting contributors to adolescent substance use.

Immigrant family skills-building to prevent tobacco use in Latino youth: study protocol for a community-based participatory randomized controlled trial

BackgroundDespite declines over recent years, youth tobacco and other substance use rates remain high. Latino youth are at equal or increased risk for lifetime tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drug use compared with their white peers. Family plays an important and influential role in the lives of youth, and longitudinal research suggests that improving parenting skills may reduce youth substance use. However, few interventions are oriented towards immigrant Latino families, and none have been developed and evaluated using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) process that may increase the effectiveness and sustainability of such projects. Therefore, using CBPR principles, we developed a randomized clinical trial to assess the efficacy of a family-skills training intervention to prevent tobacco and other substance use intentions in Latino youth.Methods/DesignIn collaboration with seven Latino community-serving agencies, we will recruit and randomize 336 immigrant families, into intervention or delayed treatment conditions. The primary outcome is youth intention to smoke 6 months post intervention. The intervention consists of eight parent and four youth sessions targeting parenting skills and parent–youth relational factors associated with lower smoking and other substance use in youth.DiscussionWe present the study protocol for a family intervention using a CBPR randomized clinical trial to prevent smoking among Latino youth. The results of this trial will contribute to the limited information on effective and sustainable primary prevention programs for tobacco and other substance use directed at the growing US Latino communities.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01442753

The road to recovery from a natural disaster: voices from the community

The studys major theme is that community sustainability after natural disasters depends on adaptive capacities of individuals, families and businesses. Action research grounded in a community resilience theory (Norris, Stevens, Pfefferbaum, Wyche, & Pfefferbaum, 2008) and NVOADs (National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) recovery model assumptions found support for five community implementation strategies used in a rural communitys flood recovery and resilience process. Two years after the flood devastated over 90% of businesses and 65% of homes, collective, yet varied, community voices shared what worked and what did not work.

Parents Forever: Evaluation of an Online Divorce Education Program

Divorce education programs are conducting increasingly rigorous impact evaluations to assess if their curriculum improves parenting practices, reduces conflict in the coparenting relationship, and improves outcomes for children. This article presents a 6-month follow-up evaluation of the online version of Parents Forever, an 8-hour divorce education course developed by the University of Minnesota Extension. At follow-up, parents (N = 232) reported significant improvements on several questions about postdivorce parenting and well-being, indicating that the online version of Parents Forever is effective in promoting positive behavioral change for parents.

Strengthening the Role of Unmarried Fathers: Findings from the Co-Parent Court Project

While the importance of fathers in unmarried coparent families is a strong area of social and political interest, a dearth of community-based interventions exists for supporting the role of fathers in at-risk families. The Co-Parent Court (CPC) was a 3-year demonstration project evaluating the effectiveness of a collaborative intervention to support unmarried coparents establishing paternity and improving their coparenting relationships and paternal involvement in their childs life. A randomized-control experimental design was employed. The paper will explore father involvement and coparent relationship outcomes.

System-Wide Evaluation: Taking the Pulse of a National Organization Serving Children, Youth, and Families at Risk

Effective organizations evolve with society. As a response to conditions that place children and their families at risk, the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Cooperative Extension) funded the Children, Youth, and Families At Risk National Initiative and expanded the audiences typically served. To assess organizational support for programs for at-risk audiences and examine system-wide changes, Cooperative Extension conducted a system-wide evaluation effort. From late 1997 to early 1998, data were collected from 4,956 Extension professionals working on issues related to children, youth, and families. The Organizational Change Survey was developed to measure 5 components of organizational support for programming. Performance gap items were included to compare perceptions of the current system to perceptions of an ideal system. In this article, we outline the evaluation process and discuss results that informed Cooperative Extension regarding the st...