Program Components

• Community-based intervention including two major components: Focus on Kids (FOK) and ImPACT (Informed Parents and Children Together
• Focus on Kids, an 8-session risk reduction intervention, emphasizing making decisions, setting goals, communicating, negotiating, and creating consensual relationships and comprising:

• Interactive games, discussion groups, videos, and homework
• Factual information on abstinence and safer sex, drugs, alcohol, and selling drugs
• ImPACT, a culturally appropriate videotape with group discussion and a role play for youth and parents
• Four 90-minute Focus on Kids booster sessions (Optional)
• Facilitator training

For Use With

• African American youth, ages 13 to 16
• Low-income youth living in public housing developments

Evaluation Methodology

• Randomized, longitudinal, quasi-experimental trial conducted in 35 low-income housing developments in Baltimore, Maryland, recruited between 1999 and 2000 in three waves: wave one from eight sites; wave two from 10 sites; and wave three from 17 sites
• Youth (n=817) randomly assigned to one of three conditions: FOK only (n=321); FOK plus ImPACT (n=258); and FOK plus ImPACT plus booster sessions (n=238)
• Surveys at baseline and at 24 months after receipt of FOK

Evaluation Findings

• Reduced incidence of pregnancy or involvement in a pregnancy

Evaluators' Comments: These data suggest that properly designed risk-reduction interventions can exert sustained effects over a broad array of behaviors... The evidence from this study suggests that to have this effect, interventions will require multiple delivery approaches. In this intervention, we used face-to-face strategies addressing youth and their parents.
Stanton, Cole, Galbraith et al., 2004

Program Description

This community-based intervention has two integral and one optional components:

1. Focus on Kids (FOK) is a risk reduction intervention based on the protection motivation theory. FOK is offered across eight sessions, each lasting about 1.5 hours. FOK emphasizes making decisions, setting goals, communicating, and negotiating. It helps adolescents to define consensual relationships and provides information about abstinence and safer sex, drugs and alcohol, and selling drugs. FOK includes interactive games, discussion groups, homework assignments, and videotapes. FOK is designed for small groups, comprising five to 12 youth, guided by two facilitators.
2. ImPACT is intended for adolescents and their parents and includes a 20-minute culturally appropriate video, followed by a role play scenario. After parents and youth participate in the role play, the facilitator provides feedback, emphasizing the points made by the video. He/she also demonstrates use of a condom.
3. Optional booster sessions are 90 minutes in length, delivered to small groups of youth, at seven, 10, 13, and 16 months after they participated in FOK. The booster sessions review and reinforce skills in making decisions and communicating and include repeat activities from the original FOK sessions as well as new activities that emphasize the same principles and content.

Evaluation Methodology

The quasi-experimental, randomized, longitudinal evaluation was conducted in Baltimore MD. Participants were recruited in three waves from 35 low-income public housing developments across the city. Randomization occurred at the level of the 35 sites after all youth at all sites within the recruitment wave had been identified. Thirteen sites were randomized to receive FOK only; 11sites were randomized to receive FOK plus ImPACT (FOK+I); and 11 sites were randomized to receive FOK plus ImPACT plus boosters (FOK+I+b). Thus, evaluation compared receiving only one component with receiving two components and receiving three components.

At baseline, youth's risk behaviors were assessed by self-report. All participants were African American and lived in the low-income, urban public housing developments. At baseline, 45 percent of FOK only participants were male compared to 38 percent of FOK+I and 42 percent of FOK+I+b. The median age in all groups was 14. Among those who were present at 24-month follow-up, there were no statistically significant baseline differences between youth in the three conditions regarding proportions who reported ever having had sex, having had anal sex, having smoked cigarettes, having drunk alcohol, or having used marijuana. However, among those who failed to appear for 24-month follow-up, baseline differences were statistically significant for FOK only participants in ever having had sex (51 percent; P<.01) and for FOK+I (49 percent; P<.05) when compared to FOK+I+b (45 percent). Baseline differences between the three groups were controlled for in final analysis.

The questionnaire was administered aurally and visually by a talking MacIntosh computer. For assessing intervention effects on youth risk involvement and youth's perceptions of parental monitoring and communications, the mean score differences between FOK-only and FOK+I were compared at six and 12 months after the intervention. Because the booster sessions began only at seven months after the intervention, booster effects were assessed only at 12 months post-intervention.

Long-Term Impact

• Reduced incidence of pregnancy or involvement in pregnancy — At 24-month follow-up, youth who received FOK+I were significantly less likely than youth receiving FOK only to report having been pregnant or having gotten a girl pregnant (P=.012).

Note: It may be of value to program planners to know about behavioral findings irrelevant to the purpose of Science & Success. Compared with FOK only participants, FOK+I and FOK+I+b participants were significantly less likely to have carried a bat or stick to use as a weapon (P=.021), to have smoked cigarettes (P=.003) or to have used illicit drugs (P=.015) and significantly more likely to have asked a recent partner about condom use (P=.037).

The program is packaged as Focus on Youth plus ImPACT.

For More Information or to Order, Contact

• ETR Associates – Cherri Gardner, Senior Program Manager ETR Associates, 2811 Adeline Street, Oakland CA 94608; phone 510.645.1047, x609; email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Web http://www.etr.org/foy