Our Minnesota colleagues Drs. Chris Mehus and Jaime Ballard have been awarded a 5-year RO1 grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) designed to prevent significant behavioral health problems at a population level by providing widespread access to effective and accessible parenting programs through referrals from primary care physicians (PCPs). 

Primary care referrals can increase reach for families who might otherwise be hesitant to seek help; they are non-stigmatizing and PCPs are trusted resources. The new grant builds on their prior work that was supported by a NIMH R-34 in which they employed a brief GenPMTO-informed preventive intervention for PCP-referred families with children ages 3-8. Mehus and Ballard will also extend their innovative intervention called Support and Guide (S&G), which is designed to help PCPs engage parents in a conversation about parenting and thereby facilitate effective referrals. In the pilot study, the parents who received the 6-session virtual eGen intervention reported improvements in parenting and saw greater reductions in behavior problems when compared with parents who only received written information. For the S&G program, trained PCC’s were more likely to refer patients and refer a greater percentage of their patients compared to those in a control condition. These promising findings provided the essential support to obtain more extensive funding.

The new grant, which is now under way, builds on the earlier grant by conducting a cost effectiveness evaluation and two fully powered Randomized Controlled Trials: the eGen parenting program and the S&G program for PCPs. Multiple cohorts of clinicians will be trained over the next few years and infrastructure roles (coaching, training) will be filled. Laura Rains and Bessie Turner, who led the pilot eGen training in 2022, began the R01 workshops this November with an in-person 3.5-day workshop with 10 clinicians (marriage and family therapists, clinical social workers). This workshop will be followed up with 15-20 weekly one-hour virtual sessions.  Laura and Bessie reported good engagement, lots of practice, and multiple activities designed to integrate the group’s clinical skillset with the eGen curriculum. Workshop evaluations reached stellar levels. For example, one participant said: The training was excellent and comprehensive and the trainers were really lovely, grounded and enthusiastic!

The eGen pilot study conducted in 2021-2022 was covered in a Minnesota newspaper a couple of months ago: https://sahanjournal.com/health/immigrant-parent-stress-minnesota-program-empowered-generations/