Ohio Department of Education Families

 

Topics:	Families, Safety, Health and Nutrition, Middle (5-8), Rural, Suburban, Urban
Geography:  All    Special Needs:  None  Race:  None specified   Gender:  Both			Contact Name: Karl E. Bauman, Ph.D Contact Email: kbauman@mindspring.com
Family Matters is a family-directed program that reduces tobacco and alcohol use among 12- to 14-year-olds. The intervention program uses of four booklets mailed to the home and follow-up telephone calls by health educators. The booklets contain lessons and activities designed to motivate families to participate in the program and encourage families to consider characteristics related to adolescent substance use. Booklet content includes communication skills, parenting styles, attachment and time together, educational encouragement, conflict resolution, availability of tobacco and alcohol in the home, family rules about child use of tobacco and alcohol and insights into peer and media influences. After each mailing, health educators phone parents to encourage them to complete the book and any included parent–child activities, and to answer questions. Each booklet contains information based on behavioral science theory and research and includes participant activities. The Family Matters program was evaluated through a randomized experimental design. The evaluation data illustrates decreases in substance use, such as reduced adolescent cigarette smoking and reduced adolescent alcohol use. The effect sizes at three and 12 months post-program were modest, but compared favorably with the average effect sizes found for the most effective school-based drug curricula studies with randomized experimental designs.   Family Matters is an evidence-based program scientifically demonstrated to change youth behaviors or risk and protective factors using a research design of the highest rigor (experimental with random assignment). It was reviewed by Find Youth Info at www.findyouthinfo.gov and look under Programs and Strategies.
www.sph.unc.edu/familymatters/introduction.htm