Session: Family Focused Prevention of Behavioral Health Problems in Primary Care (Society for Prevention Research 23rd Annual Meeting)

This session aims to stimulate prevention researchers to broaden prevention trials with parents and families to primary care settings. Because they monitor young children’s behavior and development, primary care pediatricians are in a good position to identify early symptoms of behavioral disorders such as Attention Deficient/Hyperactivity Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and to provide or refer parents to programs that strengthen their capacity to reduce children’s behavioral problems. Parenting programs provided as children enter adolescence have shown lasting effects in reducing teen tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use in controlled trials, as well as risky sexual behavior. Pediatric and family medicine practices could provide or refer families to effective parenting programs targeted for reducing risks of adolescent behavioral health problems with minimal risk of stigma for participation, though this is rarely done. With strong evidence of effectiveness from these kinds of preventive work as deemed sufficient by the United States Preventive Services Task Force, tested and effective parent and family focused preventive interventions could become insured preventive services during this period of health reform. This symposium begins with the chair providing background on how “clinical preventive services” provided in or referred from primary care settings can become mandatory benefits without cost sharing for all insured under private insurance or Medicare as one of the provisions of the ACA. We present three examples of parent and family focused preventive interventions implemented in pediatric clinics. These projects demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of introducing preventive parent education into a new context: the primary care pediatric office. 

The first presentation in this symposium will present results from the Advanced Parenting Education in Pediatrics experimental trial of the Incredible Years Parenting Program in 11 pediatric practices involving families with 2 and 3 year olds exhibiting early disruptive behavior identified through screening in well child visits. The second presentation will present the Healthy Steps program including research evidence on the effectiveness of the Healthy Steps Specialists, and opportunities as well as challenges in scaling up the program in pediatric practices. A third presentation will discuss progress in adapting and assessing the feasibility of delivering an electronic version of Familias Unidas, a family based intervention targeted to prevent adolescent substance use and HIV risk behavior in pediatric and primary care practice settings in Miami, FL.