Pennsylvania Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program

This project is designed to evaluate a statewide, hospital-based parent education program to prevent abusive head trauma (AHT) in Pennsylvania, and investigate the additional effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of "booster" sessions of parent education delivered to parents at primary care provider offices in central Pennsylvania.

Specific Aims:

1. Assess the effectiveness of an established statewide program of hospital-based postnatal parent education about violent infant shaking, provided at a single consistent point in time between the infant's birth and hospital discharge, in reducing the incidence of AHT.
2. Identify which component(s) are the most important mediators of the intervention's effectiveness; determine whether the intervention effect is more directly related to changes in perpetrator or caregiver behavior; and determine the effectiveness of the intervention among various socioeconomic groups.
3. Determine the cost effectiveness of the hospital-based program.
4. Establish the feasibility, additional costs, and effectiveness of a combined program of repeated exposure delivered both post-natally in the hospital and during follow up 2-, 4- and 6-month outpatient health maintenance visits with the pediatric care provider.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Child Abuse; Traumatic Brain Injury; Injury
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program: State-wide; Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program Booster: Central PA

Detailed Description

Upon the birth of the child, all parents (mothers, and whenever possible, fathers or father figures) will be asked to read written materials and view an 8-minute video on the dangers of violent infant shaking. Parents will be asked to voluntarily sign a commitment statement affirming their receipt and understanding of the materials; these commitment statements will be sent to the Principal Investigator. A random subset of parent participants will be asked to voluntarily answer a short questionnaire about their impressions of the materials. In addition, 31 counties in central Pennsylvania will be randomly divided into two groups. In 15 counties, the hospital-based intervention will remain as described above. In the other 16 counties, all primary care providers having offices in those counties will be asked to provide all parents of newborns at the 2-, 4-, and 6-month immunization visits another set of written materials about violent infant shaking and voluntarily sign a response form that they read and understood the materials. Participating parents in this group will also be asked if they would be willing to complete a short telephone survey when the infant is 7 months old (and if so, asked to provide a telephone number). The telephone survey asks questions about the intervention materials and parents' perception of the information, and seeks to determine the mediators of a program effect. An invitation letter will be sent to a control group of parents who do not receive the office-based intervention to ask if they would be willing to complete the short telephone survey when their infant is 7 months old.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 949609
• Phase: Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: Child; Adult; Older Adult
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Parents giving birth in a PA hospital

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Prevention
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: State-wide; All parents of newborns in Pennsylvania hospitals will receive the parent education materials	Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program: State-wide; Upon the birth of the child in a Pennsylvania hospital, all parents (mothers, and whenever possible, fathers or father figures) will be asked to read written materials and view an 8-minute video on the dangers of violent infant shaking. Parent education materials contain four key messages: crying is a normal infant behavior, how to keep calm when an infant is crying, how to help calm a crying infant, how to select other caregivers for your infant. Parents will be asked to voluntarily sign a commitment statement affirming their receipt and understanding of the materials.
Experimental: Central PA; All of Central PA new parents will receive the state-wide hospital-based intervention. In half of the 31 central PA counties, all primary care providers having offices in those counties provide an office-based booster intervention to new parents. The other half of central PA counties will receive the state-wide, hospital-based intervention, but not the office-based booster intervention.	Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program: State-wide; Upon the birth of the child in a Pennsylvania hospital, all parents (mothers, and whenever possible, fathers or father figures) will be asked to read written materials and view an 8-minute video on the dangers of violent infant shaking. Parent education materials contain four key messages: crying is a normal infant behavior, how to keep calm when an infant is crying, how to help calm a crying infant, how to select other caregivers for your infant. Parents will be asked to voluntarily sign a commitment statement affirming their receipt and understanding of the materials.; Behavioral: PA Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program Booster: Central PA; All primary care providers serving families of newborns in half of the counties in Central PA will be asked to provide all parents of newborns at the 2-, 4-, and 6-month immunization visits another set of written materials about violent infant shaking and voluntarily sign a response form that they read and understood the materials.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Time Frame
Incidence of abusive head trauma in infants	3 years

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Collaborators: Pennsylvania Department of Health; American Academy of Pediatrics
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Mark Dias, MD, FAAP, Penn State University Hershey Medical Center

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Dias MS, Smith K, DeGuehery K, Mazur P, Li V, Shaffer ML. Preventing abusive head trauma among infants and young children: a hospital-based, parent education program. Pediatrics. 2005 Apr;115(4):e470-7. doi: 10.1542/peds.2004-1896.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: January 1, 2008
• Primary Completion (Actual): September 1, 2012
• Study Completion (Actual): September 1, 2012

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: July 30, 2008
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: July 31, 2008
• First Posted (Estimate): August 1, 2008

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): February 9, 2015
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 6, 2015
• Last Verified: February 1, 2015

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Brain Diseases; Central Nervous System Diseases; Nervous System Diseases; Trauma, Nervous System; Brain Injuries; Wounds and Injuries; Brain Injuries, Traumatic; Craniocerebral Trauma
• Other Study ID Numbers: U49CE001274 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)