Salud y éxito

Challenge

The transition from childhood to adolescence presents pre-teens with many new health decisions. Although parents play an important role in helping their children make safe choices during this time, conversations about sensitive topics such as sex can often be difficult for both parents and children.

EDC developed Salud y éxito/Health and Success, a culturally tailored audio-based health intervention to help Latino parents support their pre-teenage children. This parent-focused approach has been shown to be effective in promoting positive parenting practices and reducing early sexual risk and related behaviors among youth, and it is in high demand by schools, community-based family-planning centers, and health care providers serving Latino families.

Key Activities

Salud y éxito uses role model stories to help parents monitor and set rules, communicate proactively, and support youth during their transition into the high school years. The project’s activities included:

Developed Salud y éxito in English and Spanish to help Latino parents promote youth health
Evaluated Salud y éxito

Impact

An evaluation of Salud y éxito, conducted by EDC, found that students whose parents received the intervention were less likely to report sexual initiation compared to students whose parents did not receive the intervention.
In addition, significantly fewer students from the intervention group reported having intentions to have sex in the next 12 months compared to those in the comparison group.