Parent-Targeted Interventions to Improve Communication with Teenagers About Sex and Alcohol

Parental influence can impact adolescents' decision-making around risk behaviors, possibly preventing sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancy, and alcohol use. Now, investigators have studied whether a brief, primary-care-based intervention with parents increases parent-adolescent communication (PAC) on these topics.

Researchers in an urban clinic randomized 118 dyads of one adolescent (aged 14–15 years) plus one parent to participate in a sexual health or alcohol use intervention or receive usual care (control condition) at an adolescent well care visit. Intervention-group participants arrived 15 minutes early. Parents sat away from their adolescent to review and discuss written study materials with a health coach, then joined t…