BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH BASE: STRENTHENING FAMILIES PROGRAM
WSU Extension has taken a nationally recognized curriculum called the Strengthening Families Program for Parents and Youth 10-14 to new levels of implementation. A strong partnership with a campus-based prevention scientist has insured a well-integrated research and outreach program, including a process that engages collaborators from three state agencies in joint data collection. WSU Extension invested significant resources in expanding outreach to Latino and tribal families by adapting a Spanish language curriculum for state use, training bilingual/bicultural facilitators, translating evaluation instruments, and seeking stakeholder input through advisory structures and partnerships. SFP practitioners who utilize Extension’s evaluation protocols receive individualized outcome reports prepared by faculty and graduate students from the WSU Department of Human Development. Resulting data from over 100 programs and over 2000 parents and youth document statistically significant positive changes in four family protective factors: clear rules about substance use, positive involvement, family harmony and open communication.
ISSUE AND SITUATION
Researchers from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services have identified individual, family, peer, and community factors that put a young person at greater or lesser risk of using alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs. Among their findings are that family factors such as history of substance abuse, divorce, and child abuse/neglect are linked to adolescent substance abuse. In addition, they identified early involvement in the criminal justice system (ages 10-14) as a risk factor for later substance abuse (Barga, Ferguson & Kohlenberg, 2006). Conversely, protective factors such as parental warmth and strong family management skills reduce the likelihood of substance use and delinquency. These data clearly suggest that engaging parents and families in the late elementary and middle school years is an effective strategy to reduce risk of adolescent substance use and other problem behaviors.
The Strengthening Families Program (SFP) for Parents and Youth 10-14 Years is a nationally recognized curriculum with a strong longitudinal research base. Developed by Iowa State University, the program has successfully documented its effectiveness in delaying adolescent substance use, reducing youth aggression and improving family management skills. As a result, it is considered a “best practice” program by many state and federal agencies. Extension faculty at WSU Extension first recognized the opportunity to become training and research partners in SFP in 1999. Since that time, we have trained over 400 facilitators from 29 Washington counties and collected evaluation data from over 100 programs and over 2000 parents and youth. In 2004, we introduced a Spanish language version of the program and are now the sole training organization for Spanish language facilitators in Washington State.
STAKEHOLDERS AND INPUT
Because of its recognition as a best practice program, a number of state agencies and educational organizations fund local SFP efforts. In 2003, WSU Extension took the lead in organizing a state interagency team so that training, dissemination and evaluation efforts for the program could be more effectively coordinated. Representatives from the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse (DASA), the Family Policy Council, Community Mobilization (part of the state’s Community Trade and Economic Development- CTED agency), the Department of Health and local educational service districts participate. The group provides statewide input on community needs, underserved populations, and program dissemination issues. One outcome of this collaborative needs assessment process was Extension’s expansion of the program to reach Latino families. This outreach effort was guided by bilingual/bicultural staff and program facilitators, particularly in Mason and Chelan/Douglas counties. On the basis of their input, we have been successful in adapting a Spanish language curriculum for state use, training bilingual/bicultural facilitators across the state, and translating evaluation instruments for use with monolingual parents. A similar effort is now underway to improve Extension’s SFP outreach to tribal families.
EXTENSION FOCUS AND RESEARCH BASE
The dissemination of the SFP program is closely tied to one of WSU Extension’s Strategic Goals: Empower youth and families to achieve social, economic and educational success. It is also well-aligned with the strategic direction of the WSU Human Development program to become a regional leader in prevention science by applying the results of state-of-the-art social science research to the design and evaluation of effective programs. The intersection of our strategic goals has resulted in a partnership around SFP that models the seamless integration of research and extension work.
Our accomplishments in the program have been greatly facilitated by a strong longitudinal research base developed by colleagues at Iowa State University. The original controlled, randomized trial in Iowa showed that four years after the program, youth who attended SFP with their families were significantly less likely to have started using alcohol and tobacco. They were also less aggressive than youth in the control group. Families who attended SFP also reported significant increases in family cohesion (Spoth et.al., 2001). These long-term effects are particularly impressive for an educational program that engages parents and youth in a relatively short intervention (seven sessions).
Research documentation of the program’s effectiveness has led to recognition of SFP by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the US Departments of Education, of Justice, and of Health and Human Services. In a systematic review of the literature on adolescent substance abuse prevention programs, SFP was judged the single program with a convincing research base demonstrating long-term effectiveness (Foxcroft et al., 2003). The focus of WSU research has been to document SFP’s effectiveness when the program is delivered by practitioners in community settings to see if the findings from controlled randomized trials can be replicated in the “real world.”
MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE COMPONENTS
The state interagency team has not only been an important set of partners in determining program direction and expansion, but the state agencies involved have also collaborated on the collection of SFP evaluation data. Our partners agreed to require the WSU research protocols for the local programs they fund, leading to a much larger and richer database for our analysis. The requirement has also eased the burden on local program facilitators, who in many cases had to use multiple evaluation and reporting tools for one program.
The Strengthening Families Program has also led to the initiation of a number of new partnerships with other WSU units. A faculty member and Ph.D. student from the School of Economic Sciences recently joined our team. Their capacity to provide cost-benefit analyses for the program will allow us to more effectively influence public policy around the funding of prevention programs in the state and perhaps nationally. This particular line of research is of interest to a broader group of faculty at WSU, including some from health sciences disciplines, and led to the Graduate School’s funding of an internal collaboration grant that will result in the preparation of a joint funding proposal to a federal agency for further prevention research. Internally, Strengthening Families has also been a viable model for joint work across Extension family and 4-H youth development program areas, which more effectively leverages our organizational expertise and capacity than single-discipline efforts.
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES
One of the keys to crafting a well-integrated research and extension program has been creating incentives for local community programs to participate in the collection of SFP evaluation data. Too often, campus-based researchers expect practitioners to utilize their instruments and share data and are disappointed when motivation to participate wanes. In the case of SFP, the prevention researcher and her graduate students give something concrete back to local facilitators of the program. In exchange for collecting and submitting their evaluation data to WSU, department-based faculty and students conduct the data analysis and create customized outcome reports that local programs can then share with their funders and constituents. Thirty-six of these reports were prepared in 2006. A sample report can be viewed on the Strengthening Families Program website http://sfp.wsu.edu in the Evaluation section.
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