The Triple P Online System and the Dissemination of Evidence-Based Parenting Supports through Pediatric Practices: The Parenting Help Online Study

A critical strategy in a public health approach to improving parenting is to ensure that interventions are widely accessible through existing delivery mechanisms. Primary care clinics are an ideal setting for the early detection of child behavior and parenting problems and for disseminating parenting interventions. Pediatricians are typically the first point of contact for families with behavioral or parenting difficulties, and most parents trust pediatricians as a source of authority and information. Most pediatricians, however, are not well trained in how to treat behavior problems, and despite new practice guidelines and policy statements, they remain largely unequipped to provide effective guidance for behavior problems or parenting dysfunction. The Parenting Help Online study is testing the viability of delivering the Triple P Online System (TPOS) through pediatric settings to improve pediatricians’ ability to meet families’ needs. TPOS is a three-level online system of Triple P parenting supports designed to engage and activate parents through personalized, flexible, interactive, video-driven content with dosage adjusted to family need. In the Parenting Help Online study, participating pediatricians are trained to refer families to TPOS and support its use. The study will evaluate the efficacy of TPOS for improving parents’ skill in handling the problematic behaviors of their 3- to 8-year-old children, as well as its efficacy for reducing parents’ stress and children’s behavior problems, in a sample of 400 families recruited through 30 pediatric clinics involving 100 pediatricians in Washington State. The Parenting Help Online study will also simultaneously evaluate the effects of training pediatricians in TPOS on improving their protocol for assisting parents of children with disruptive behavior problems, their self-efficacy for handling these issues, and their attitudes toward evidence-based and self-administered parenting interventions, as well as examine predictors of their uptake of the program. This presentation will describe the Parenting Help Online study, demonstrate the Triple P Online System, and present preliminary baseline data from the pediatrician sample on their current protocols for handling the disruptive behavior problems of children in their practice, their self-efficacy for working with parents on these issues, and their attitudes toward the use of evidence-based parenting interventions as well as self-administered parenting interventions.