23406890

PMC4538929

Purpose

To examine the cost and cost-effectiveness of implementing Talking Parents, Healthy Teens, a worksite-based parenting program designed to help parents address sexual health with their adolescent children.

Methods

We enrolled 535 parents with adolescent children at 13 worksites in southern California in a randomized trial. Time and wage data from employees involved in implementing the program were used to estimate fixed and variable costs. Cost-effectiveness was determined with nonparametric bootstrap analysis. For the intervention, parents participated in eight weekly one-hour teaching sessions at lunchtime. The program included games, discussions, role plays, and videotaped role plays to help parents learn to communicate with their children about sex-related topics, teach their children assertiveness and decision-making skills, and supervise and interact with their children more effectively.

Results

Implementing the program cost $543.03 (SD=$289.98) per worksite in fixed costs, and $28.05 per parent (SD=$4.08) in variable costs. At 9 months, this $28.05 investment per parent yielded improvements in number of sexual health topics discussed, condom teaching, and communication quality and openness. The cost-effectiveness was $7.42 per new topic discussed using parental responses and $9.18 using adolescent responses. Other efficacy outcomes also yielded favorable cost-effectiveness ratios.

Conclusions

Talking Parents, Healthy Teens demonstrated the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a worksite-based parenting program to promote parent-adolescent communication about sexual health. Its cost is reasonable and unlikely to be a significant barrier to adoption and diffusion for most worksites considering its implementation.

CDC Public Access

R01 MH61202/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States
R34 MH090790/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States
U48/CCU915773/PHS HHS/United States
U48/DP000056/DP/NCCDPHP CDC HHS/United States
R01 MH061202/MH/NIMH NIH HHS/United States