Families Preparing a New Generation: Adaption of a Parent-Adolescent Substance Use Intervention for Burmese Refugee Families

Introduction: The overall goal of the proposed research project was to implement an adaptation of the established Families Preparing a New Generation (FPNG) substance use intervention (Marsiglia, Williams, Ayers, & Booth, 2014) for use with Burmese refugee parents to improve parenting skills to reduce the risk of substance use in their school-aged children. The proposed research discusses pertinent cultural adaptions made in order to implement the curriculum with the Burmese refugee parent community.

Methods: The adapted FPNG curriculum was administered twice in 10 bi-weekly group sessions over a two-month period at a community center in the same neighborhood as the school the adolescents attend. The curriculum was administered by “community ambassadors” recruited by a community social services organization working with this population to adapt, translate, and deliver the curriculum. Community ambassadors worked with the investigators to adapt the curriculum to be sensitive to particular needs and cultural norms and to establish trust and rapport with the Burmese refugee parents.

Results: Fidelity questions were administered at each session asking about how well the workshop covered session content, what the best part of the workshop was, and how the workshop could be improved. Quantitative pretest measures were administered at the beginning of the first session, while a posttest was administered at the end of the last session. Focus groups were conducted after the last workshop with the 14 mothers who completed the curriculum. Questions focused on adapting to U.S. culture, the parent child relationship, including parent communication and parental monitoring, what the parents learned from the curriculum, and suggestions on improving the curriculum. Focus group responses suggested that the program did bridge acculturation differences and encouraged parents to be more involved with their offspring’s lives and peer relationships.

Conclusions: The adaptation of the FPNG curriculum focused on the new refugee experience for families, particularly the parent-offspring acculturation gap. It teaches parenting skills that emphasize the effects of the acculturation gap and what can be done to ameliorate those effects. This project demonstrated the feasibility of adapting FPNG for use with recent immigrant families whose offspring are at risk for behavioral problems due to the stresses and cultural disruptions of the acculturation process.