title: Cost of talking parents, healthy teens: a worksite-based intervention to promote parent-adolescent sexual health communication.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  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. We used time and wage data from employees involved in implementing the program to estimate fixed and variable costs. We determined cost-effectiveness with nonparametric bootstrap analysis. For the intervention, parents participated in eight weekly 1-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 (standard deviation, $289.98) per worksite in fixed costs, and $28.05 per parent (standard deviation, $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 is unlikely to be a significant barrier to adoption and diffusion for most worksites considering its implementation.
authors: Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York. Electronic address: jladapo@post.harvard.edu.
authors: Joseph A
authors: JA
authors: Ladapo
authors: Marc N
authors: MN
authors: Elliott
authors: Laura M
authors: LM
authors: Bogart
authors: David E
authors: DE
authors: Kanouse
authors: Katherine D
authors: KD
authors: Vestal
authors: David J
authors: DJ
authors: Klein
authors: Jessica A
authors: JA
authors: Ratner
authors: Mark A
authors: MA
authors: Schuster
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003142:Communication; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D004505:Education, Nonprofessional / Q000191:economics*; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005260:Female; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D012736:Sex Education / Q000191:economics*; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D017132:Workplace / Q000191:economics*
keywords: Adolescent sexual behavior; Communication; Cost; Cost-effectiveness; Health promotion; Parent–child relations; Sex education; Workplace