The strong African American families-teen trial: rationale, design, engagement processes, and family-specific effects.

This study addresses two limitations in the literature on family-centered intervention programs for adolescents: ruling out nonspecific factors that may explain program effects and engaging parents into prevention programs. The Rural African American Families Health project is a randomized, attention-controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of the Strong African American Families-Teen (SAAF-T) program, a family-centered risk-reduction intervention for rural African American adolescents. Rural African American families (n = 502) with a 10th-grade student were assigned randomly to receive SAAF-T or a similarly structured, family-centered program that focused on health and nutrition. Families participated in audio computer-assisted self-interviews at baseline and 6-month follow-up. Program implementation procedures yielded a design with equivalent doses, five sessions of family-centered intervention programming for families in each condition. Of eligible families screened for participation, 76% attended four or five sessions of the program. Consistent with our primary hypotheses, SAAF-T youth, compared to attention-control youth, demonstrated higher levels of protective family management skills, a finding that cannot be attributed to nonspecific factors such as aggregating families in a structured, interactive setting.

Family-centered program deters substance use, conduct problems, and depressive symptoms in black adolescents.

OBJECTIVES: The present research addressed the following important question in pediatric medicine: Can participation in a new family-centered preventive intervention, the Strong African American Families-Teen (SAAF-T) program, deter conduct problems, substance use, substance use problems, and depressive symptoms among rural black adolescents across 22 months? METHODS: Data were collected from 502 black families in rural Georgia, assigned randomly to SAAF-T or an attention control condition. The prevention condition consisted of 5 consecutive meetings at community facilities with separate, concurrent sessions for caregivers and adolescents followed by a caregiver-adolescent session in which families practiced skills they learned in the separate sessions. Adolescents self-reported conduct problem behaviors, substance use, substance use problems, and depressive symptoms at ages 16 years (pretest) and 17 years 10 months (long-term assessment). RESULTS: Adolescents who participated in SAAF-T evinced lower increases in conduct problem behavior, substance use, substance use problems, and depressive symptom frequencies than did adolescents in the attention control condition across the 22 months between pretest and long-term assessment. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to demonstrate efficacy in a prevention program designed to deter conduct problems, substance use, substance use problems, and depressive symptoms among rural black adolescents. Because SAAF-T is a manualized, structured program, it can be easily disseminated to public health agencies, schools, churches, boys' and girls' clubs, and other community organizations.