Effectiveness and utilization of a parent education curriculum: A two-level evaluation of educators and parents

Although parental communication is effective in reducing adolescent risk behaviors, many parents hesitate to communicate with their children about sex. Community educators can be effective mediators to provide necessary information and skills to parenting adults. Each trained educator can reach many parenting adults producing an exponential effect on sexual health education and communication. Methods: The Building Family Connections (BFC) curriculum was developed to provide information and skills to increase parent-child sexual health communication. During a 2.5-day training, community educators are equipped to provide the 10-hour BFC curriculum to parenting adults in their communities. Objectives: To 1) evaluate the effectiveness of BFC curriculum training for educators, 2) assess uptake and utilization in educators' communities nationwide, and 3) evaluate effectiveness in transferring this information to parenting adults through trained community educators. Results: In May 2008, 34 (6 male, 27 female) educators, were trained to provide BFC. Pre/post and training evaluation surveys showed significant increases in participant knowledge (p<0.05). Most participants agreed that the training was useful and prepared them to hold the BFC course for parenting adults. Through January 2010, approximately 290 parenting adults have attended 23 BFC courses held by 7 trainers. Furthermore, evaluation of these courses for parenting adults have shown significant changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of parents related to sexual health communication with adolescents. Challenges in implementation include educator attrition, parent recruitment and retention, and data collection for reporting community courses. Conclusion: BFC training of educators is exponentially effective in enhancing parenting adult-youth sexual health communication.