(PS5-5) Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement in a Brief, Virtual Behavioral Parenting Group for Historically Underserved Families

Parenting interventions are the first line of treatment for early childhood mental health concerns due to their benefits on parenting stress and practices as well as most child emotional and behavioral problems. These interventions help up to 20% of children showing elevated externalizing concerns during early childhood. Parenting interventions aim to help parents practice more positive parenting and behavior management strategies. They reduce harsh parenting, parenting stress, and children’s externalizing concerns while also improving positive parenting. Group-based parenting programs delivered through telehealth are effective, scalable, accessible, and empower parents through supporting each other. However, parenting interventions have substantial engagement issues, and many children show limited to no benefit. Evidence shows that approximately 14% of parents participate in any form of parent education and engagement in evidence-based interventions is even lower. Minority status has generally been associated with greater drop-out and lower engagement related to adverse social determinants of health. To identify barriers and facilitators of parent engagement in a brief, virtual behavioral parenting training (BPT) group, we are conducting semi-structured interviews with family service workers from a local Head Start (n = 25), who have been responsible for engaging and referring Head Start parents to the group. To increase access to historically underserved populations experiencing adverse social determinants of health, Head Start was chosen because they serve a diverse population of children ages 0-5, with 59% Hispanic/Latino, 28% Black/African American, and 16% Biracial or Multiracial, all meeting federal low-income eligibility guidelines. This study is being guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), which is a framework to help guide the systematic assessment of potential barriers and facilitators and to identify constructs influencing dissemination and implementation (D&I). It’s critical to identify and understand the barriers that minority parents face when it comes to engaging in BPT to increase access to care for historically underserved families. The CFIR framework is being used to guide data analysis, coding for themes, and to contextualize the findings that will be presented in this poster.