Family Listening Program: Multi-Tribal Implementation and Evaluation

This is a five-year R01 effectiveness trial where tribal partners are committed to assessing the Family Listening/Circle Program's effectiveness and disseminating the approach and intervention within Indian Country as a best practice in reducing substance abuse health disparities.Three specific aims of the grant are 1) To rigorously test effectiveness of FLCP; with a comparative longitudinal design within and across the tribes, with 4th graders to prevent substance initiation/use and strengthen families; 2) Through CBPR, support TRTs to transform their research capacities into local prevention research infrastructures and partnering; 3)To assess additional program effects on other health/education programs and leadership within the tribes. In sum, this multi-tribal/academic partnership builds on accomplishments to test the effectiveness of an innovative intervention. This grant provides an unparalleled opportunity to reduce substance abuse in three tribal communities, strengthen tribal research capacities, and impact substance abuse prevention research designs nationally, by illustrating how CBPR processes can integrate evidence-based and cultural-centered practices to create effective programs that generate community ownership and sustainability.

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Key information

Conditions

Substance Abuse Chemically-Induced Disorders Mental Disorders Substance-Related Disorders

Age range

8 year–11 year

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Pueblo of Jemez Department of Education, Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, United States

About this study

With substance abuse concerns plaguing tribal communities, health preventive approaches for American Indian (AI) children need urgent attention. Mainstream programs fall short by failing to speak to AI children on their own terms. Not so with the Family Listening/Circle Program (FL/CP) which integrates an evidence-based family-strengthening core, with cultural values and practices for 4th graders, their parents and elders. Through previous Native American Research Centers for Health funding (Indian Health Service & National Institutes of Health partnership) the FL/CP was created and piloted by community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnerships between the University of New Mexico Center for Participatory Research and three tribal communities: Pueblo of Jemez, Ramah Band of Navajo and Mescalero Apache Nation. FL/CP fills a gap in substance abuse prevention by recapturing historic traditions of cultural transmission, such as family dinner story-telling where elders connect with children, supporting enhanced child-family communication and psycho-social coping through traditional dialogue, indigenous languages and empowerment where children and families create community action projects addressing community substance abuse. With initial FL/CP pilot and feasibility research completed, Tribal Research Teams (TRTs) from the Pueblo of Jemez, Ramah Band of Navajo and Mescalero Apache Nation are now in place for full program implementation and effectiveness testing through a longitudinal quasi-experimental design involving a long-term, multi-tribal/academic research partnership. Under this five-year R01 effectiveness trial, tribal partners are committed to assessing the program's effectiveness and disseminating the approach and intervention within Indian Country as a best practice in reducing substance abuse health disparities, with TRTs collaborating on all research activities, implementation, interpretation/analysis, and dissemination plans. Three specific aims are 1) To rigorously test effectiveness of FLCP; with a comparative longitudinal design within and across the tribes, with 4th graders to prevent substance initiation/use and strengthen families; 2) Through CBPR, support TRTs to transform their research capacities into local prevention research infrastructures and partnering; 3)To assess additional program effects on other health/education programs and leadership within the tribes. In sum, this multi-tribal/academic partnership builds on accomplishments to test the effectiveness of an innovative intervention. This grant provides an unparalleled opportunity to reduce substance abuse in three tribal communities, strengthen tribal research capacities, and impact substance abuse prevention research designs nationally, by illustrating how CBPR processes can integrate evidence-based and cultural-centered practices to create effective programs that generate community ownership and sustainability.

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria includes any families from Mescalero Apache, Jemez Pueblo and Ramah Navajo with a fourth and fifth-grade child and their parents or guardian, and grandparents who will volunteer to participate. Only children's data are analyzed.

Exclusion criteria

Those whom are ineligible in this study are: those that do not give consent and/or assent to participate; those that do not identify as tribal members of Mescalero Apache, Jemez Pueblo and Ramah Navajo or as the family member of someone that identifies as Mescalero Apache, Jemez Pueblo and Ramah Navajo; children and that are not in the targeted range of fourth and fifth grade.

Treatment and study plan

Intergenerational culturally adapted curriculum

Other

Each session starts with a collective dinner with families eating together. Then practice their Indian and clan names. The sessions are led by facilitators in their own language or bilingually. The facilitators then divide the families into children and adult groups to address the theme of the session, and they then return together at the end of the session to share their learnings. The sessions always end with the children and adults writing in their journals which are individual pages that they then put in their curriculum binders. Families are then given their "home practice," which is a task that the families do together during the intervening week. The facilitators collect the curriculum binders after each session to bring back to the families the next week.

Primary outcomes

Child Well-being

Time frame: post-test (2-4 months after intervention)

Self-report measures of anxiety, Anxiety Panic/GAD Sub-Scale, average change from baseline (pre-program participation). Anxiety Items coded are coded 1-4. The scale was calculated as the arithmetic average of items, which results in a minimum value of 1 and a maximum value of 4. Lower scores are better. The Panic/GAD sub-scale was the average of three items with the same min/max as the full scale. Children surveyed at pre-test, post-test (2-4 months after intervention), and one-year post intervention.

Secondary outcomes

Child Well-being

Time frame: Post-post survey: One year after the intervention

Self-report measures of depression, change from baseline at one-year, Depression scale items were coded 1 to 3, and the arithmetic mean of 26 items was used to compute the scale. The scale has a minimum of 1.0 and a maximum of 3.0 with higher values be better, i.e. lower levels of depression.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

University of New Mexico

Other

Registry information

Important dates

Study start: 2014
Primary completion: 2019
Study completion: 2019
First posted: May 5, 2017
Registry last updated: Feb 3, 2025

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

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This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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Completed