Improving Parent-Child Communication around Reproductive Health for Latino Teen Pregnancy Prevention

Abstract

As parent-child communication has been shown to be an effective strategy for impacting adolescent sexual activity, we evaluated the effect of implementing a parent-child connectedness curriculum with parents and youth in a predominantly Latino population with high rates of teen pregnancy. We modified two evidence-based and promising parent education curricula into five two-hour workshop sessions covering reproductive health, parenting style, adolescent development, positive reinforcement, and active listening to promote emotional support. We surveyed parents (N = 65) prior to and after the program and three and six months post-programming to determine how self-reported behaviors changed. Among the 65 parents enrolled, most were female, 76.9%; Hispanic, 95.4%; married, 70.8%; and had less than a high school education, 60.3%. Post-programming, parents reported significant and sustained improvements in ability to communicate with their youth regarding reproductive health, p ＜ .001; knowledge increases about these topics, p ＜ .01; more frequent initiation of reproductive health conversations, p ＜ .05; more reproductive health topics discussed, p ＜ .001; and improvements in connectedness with their youth, p ＜ .05. The findings suggest that using a five-week parent training program improved parent- child communication. Parent-child communication programming can generate significant and sustained improvement in skills, knowledge, and confidence needed by parents to talk to their children about reproductive health. Further research is needed to assess how to replicate these results on a larger scale, particularly within high-risk populations.