The present research used a small-scale randomized clinical
trial to investigate the benefit of a parent-based intervention that
involves alliances between physicians, social workers, and parents
in reducing sexual risk taking in early adolescence. To date,
we know of no clinic-based intervention that has targeted parents
to reduce or prevent sexual risk-taking in Latino and African
American adolescents. The program intervention used a novel
outreach effort, namely it intervenes with mothers while they
are waiting for their adolescent child during a routine medical
visit that does not involve an acute health condition (e.g., a
physical examination for school). The research found that transitions
to sexual intercourse were significantly lowered as a
result of the intervention. In fact, whereas those who had transitioned
to sexual activity increased from 6% to 22% for the “standard
of care” control condition over the 9 months of the study; it
remained at 6% for those who received our intervention. Such
behavioral effects are rare for parent-based interventions and
signal that the approach we suggest is worthy of further investigation.
An important consideration for parent-based interventions is
the resource demands they place on organizations to implement
them and parents to participate in them. Many existing programs
are unrealistic in this way for resource-constrained settings.
As compared with existing parent programs, our intervention
is brief and comparatively easy to implement. It does require
a trained interventionist, but there are strategies that can be
deployed to off-set the cost of this. For example, a clinic can
establish affiliations with urban universities that train allied
health professionals and that seek to place advanced students in
internships and clinical rotations as part of their degree requirements.
Most social work programs and many public health programs
require students to fulfill community internships. As support
for our approach accumulates, we intend to maintain a web
site at the New York University and Florida International University
so that any individual or organization may download a copy
of the intervention materials for free. For organizations, advice
will be offered for ways to distribute the materials effectively and
for establishing relationships with local schools of social work.