Pennsylvania Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program

Summary

This project is designed to evaluate a statewide, hospital-based parent education program to prevent abusive head trauma (AHT) in Pennsylvania, and investigate the additional effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of "booster" sessions of parent education delivered to parents at primary care provider offices in central Pennsylvania.

Specific Aims:

1. Assess the effectiveness of an established statewide program of hospital-based postnatal parent education about violent infant shaking, provided at a single consistent point in time between the infant's birth and hospital discharge, in reducing the incidence of AHT.
2. Identify which component(s) are the most important mediators of the intervention's effectiveness; determine whether the intervention effect is more directly related to changes in perpetrator or caregiver behavior; and determine the effectiveness of the intervention among various socioeconomic groups.
3. Determine the cost effectiveness of the hospital-based program.
4. Establish the feasibility, additional costs, and effectiveness of a combined program of repeated exposure delivered both post-natally in the hospital and during follow up 2-, 4- and 6-month outpatient health maintenance visits with the pediatric care provider.

Conditions

• Injury
• Traumatic Brain Injury
• Child Abuse

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program: State-wide

Upon the birth of the child in a Pennsylvania hospital, all parents (mothers, and whenever possible, fathers or father figures) will be asked to read written materials and view an 8-minute video on the dangers of violent infant shaking. Parent education materials contain four key messages: crying is a normal infant behavior, how to keep calm when an infant is crying, how to help calm a crying infant, how to select other caregivers for your infant. Parents will be asked to voluntarily sign a commitment statement affirming their receipt and understanding of the materials.

BEHAVIORAL

PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program Booster: Central PA

All primary care providers serving families of newborns in half of the counties in Central PA will be asked to provide all parents of newborns at the 2-, 4-, and 6-month immunization visits another set of written materials about violent infant shaking and voluntarily sign a response form that they read and understood the materials.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Pennsylvania Department of Health

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• American Academy of Pediatrics

  collaborator OTHER

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  lead FED

Principal Investigators

• Mark Dias, MD, FAAP · Penn State University Hershey Medical Center

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-01-31

Primary Completion

2012-09-30

Completion

2012-09-30