Session: Engaging High Risk Youth and Families in Preventive Interventions (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

One of the key challenges for prevention science concerns how to engage the most troubled and needy families in preventive interventions that are useful and effective for those families, and that improve child and youth outcomes in key domains such as health, risky and problem behavior, and educational achievement.  The 3 papers in this symposium i) examine novel strategies for addressing issues about engaging and retaining families, schools and youth from high risk communities in preventive interventions  and ii) test these interventions in randomized trials in three different real world service delivery contexts, each with potential for ‘upscaling’.  The papers report their effects on key developmental outcomes, including parenting behavior, child problem behaviour and child health risk behaviour.  Further, moderators of intervention effectiveness and engagement in intervention are examined to explore whether interventions are more or less effective for certain subgroups of children and families.