Session: Adapting a Universal, Innovative Approach to Family Prevention for Risk Populations and Settings: Enhancing Coparenting Relations for Healthy Child Development (Society for Prevention Research 26th Annual Meeting)

Originally developed as a universal preventive intervention delivered as a series of classes for first-time parents, Family Foundations (FF) promotes co-parents’ ability to coordinate and provide mutual support—a critical foundation for parent mental health, parenting quality, and thus child development. Results from two trials of FF, and mediational analyses, supports a growing body of correlational/longitudinal research showing that coparenting support and overall quality is foundational for family members well-being and their relationships with each other. The evidence from two randomized trials of FF demonstrates the program does enhance coparenting quality, and additionally results in broad impacts including on poor pregnancy outcomes, parent stress and mental health, parenting quality, family violence, and child developmental and mental health outcomes at least through age 7. The broad and durable benefits of FF are partly a result of the program’s timing: The program is delivered around the transition to parenthood, the beginning of a stressful period for the majority of parents and couple relations.

The results from the two trials of universal FF stand in contrast to results from large federal and moderate-sized researcher-initiated trials of transition to parenting programs for couples. These replicated FF results have prompted a number of U.S. and foreign researchers to adapt the program for groups with elevated levels of risk. By bolstering the coparenting relationship in low-income or otherwise at-risk populations, FF may lead to more adaptive functioning, health, and life success for children in disadvantaged or stigmatized contexts.

This symposium will first introduce universal FF (a promising Blueprints program that has not been presented at SPR in several years despite new developments and findings); we will present the theoretical rationale, logic model, content domains, and main and mediating effects. Three presentations will then describe the adaptation process with different risk groups and settings (as opposed to cultural/linguistic adaptations), report on indicators of feasibility, and present initial trail results of the adapted programs. The three adaptations focus on: poor Latino pregnant and parenting teens in Texas, with the program delivered in a weekly high school class; poor, young, high-risk mothers in the Cincinnati area, with program delivery implemented in home visits with the mother-father supplementing the mothers’ existing traditional home visiting services; and couples with a young child recently diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. After the presentations, we will engage audience members in active discussion about challenges and solutions in adapting family programs for risk groups at elevated risk as a strategy for reducing inequality.