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The Protecting Strong African American Families Program: a Randomized Controlled Trial with Rural African American Couples

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Abstract

This study presents results from a randomized controlled trial of the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) program, a family-centered intervention designed to promote strong couple, coparenting, and parent-child relationships in two-parent African American families. A total of 346 African American couples with an early adolescent child participated; all families lived in rural, low-income communities in the southern USA. Intent-to-treat growth curve analyses involving three waves and spanning 17 months indicated that ProSAAF participants, compared with control participants, reported greater improvements in relationship communication, confidence, satisfaction, partner support, coparenting, and parenting. More than 80% of the couples attended all six of the in-home, facilitator-led sessions; costs to implement the program averaged $1739 per family. The findings inform the ongoing debate surrounding prevention programs for low-income and ethnic minority couples.

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Notes

  1. Results for females remained unchanged in non-dyadic analyses that included the addition of four female participants from same-sex dyads.

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Acknowledgements

The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or the National Institutes of Health. The authors thank Eileen Neubaum-Carlan for her editorial assistance in the preparation of this article. We also thank the families for their participation in this research.

Funding

This research was supported by Award Number R01 HD069439 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Award Number P30 DA027827 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Family Research, University of Georgia, 1095 College Station Road, Athens, GA, 30602-4527, USA

    Allen W. Barton, Steven R. H. Beach, Ashley C. Wells, Megan C. Sperr, Tracy N. Anderson & Gene H. Brody

  2. Department of Health Policy and Management, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Justin B. Ingels & Phaedra S. Corso

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  1. Allen W. Barton
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Correspondence to Allen W. Barton.

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Research Involving Human Participants

All procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university at which the research was conducted and complied with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.

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Informed consent was obtained from all couples prior to data collection and program participation.

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Barton, A.W., Beach, S.R.H., Wells, A.C. et al. The Protecting Strong African American Families Program: a Randomized Controlled Trial with Rural African American Couples. Prev Sci 19, 904–913 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-018-0895-4

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