Puerto Rico Cuidalos Parent-adolescent Program

Summary

Latino adolescents are at high risk for HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and unintended pregnancies. Puerto Rican adolescents, in particular, experience disparities in these areas, yet few adolescent and even fewer parent interventions have been developed to address these important issues with this underserved population. Parent-adolescent programs are an effective approach to reduce adolescent sexual risk behavior and associated negative consequences. A web-based parent communication intervention provides an opportunity to strengthen and enhance programs that are designed for adolescents by providing additional support for safer sex decisions, and to increase parents' access to sexual health education programs by decreasing barriers that keep them from participating in these interventions (e.g., low cost, can be viewed privately, at parents convenience, minimizes competing time with work and family). The purpose of this proposed study is to evaluate a brief theoretically informed (i.e., Ecodevelopmental Theory, Theory of Reasoned Action/Planned Behavior, Social Cognitive Theory 1-6), culturally appropriate, and linguistically tailored web-based parental communication program, Cuídalos ("Take care of them"), designed to improve parent-adolescent sexual communication and reduce adolescent sexual risk behavior. Recent findings from an NIH funded R21 randomized control trial (RCT) testing a brief computer-based version of the Cuídalos program indicated that the program increased parent-adolescent general communication and sexual risk communication with English and Spanish speaking U.S. Latinos. Further, despite limited or no previous computer use, parents reported they liked and learned from the program, and that it was easy to use and accessible.

Conditions

• HIV/AIDS and Infections
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases
• Pregnancy Prevention

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Parental Communication intervention

In this intervention, we focus on providing parents with basic knowledge about pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and STDs as a basis for effectively communicating with their adolescents. We work to support attitudes and develop skills to facilitate communication in general and specifically sexual communication. Based on our prior work we focus on prevention beliefs, reaction beliefs, and communication efficacy. Importantly, we include a component on HIV/AIDS stigma as we conceptualize this to impact attitudes and communication about sex. We will program the intervention in such a way so that parents will have to view the Cuídalos program sequentially and in its totality before being able to review any content.

BEHAVIORAL

Health promotion control condition

In this intervention, we provide a web-based program relying on existing Spanish language web-sites to provide participants with helpful information to prevent significant health problems affecting Puerto Rican adolescents that are related, not to sexual behavior, but to other behaviors. Similar to the experimental condition, we will develop a set of "homework" related to diet and exercise that we will ask parents to complete with their adolescents.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Puerto Rico

  collaborator OTHER

• Yale University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Pennsylvania

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Antonia M Villarruel, PhD, RN · University of Pennsylvania

• Nelson Varas-Diaz, PhD · University of Puerto Rico

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

13 Years

Max Age

17 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-09-30

Primary Completion

2016-08-31

Completion

2017-06-30