Child Trends Inc

Child Trends will conduct a randomized control trial evaluation of Parent Toolkit 2.0, an innovative intervention for parents and caregivers of middle and high school students. Child Trends will collaborate with Morehouse School of Medicine, Tressa Tucker & Associates, LLC, and Good Deeds Ministry to implement and evaluate the program with 1,000 parent-teen pairs across Georgia. The program includes three components that will be delivered across a three-week period: (1) an online self-paced Parent Guide with information, tips, tools, and resources on adolescent health, including sexual health; (2) four videos modeling parent-teen communication around sex and contraception; and (3) two group-based sessions for parent participants to discuss program content and improve communication skills. The program aims to increase parent knowledge and parent-teen communication about adolescent health, sexual health, and relationships to help youth adopt health-promoting behaviors such as delaying sexual initiation and increasing contraceptive use.

The National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) captures families' needs, preferences, and choices of non-parental care for children under age 13 and providers' child care and early education offerings. Since the NSECE was last conducted in 2019, the landscape of ECE has changed dramatically. Funding for early childhood programming has grown as policymakers recognize the important role access to ECE plays for families as a work support for parents and an investment in children's future educational and economic opportunities. At the same time, beginning in 2020, the nation experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to significant shifts in the U.S. economy. These circumstances likely altered parents' use of ECE and the labor market and economic forces in which ECE providers operate.
The 2024 NSECE builds on findings from the 2012 and 2019 NSECE to allow for comparisons of supply and demand of child care and early education over the 12 years that span data collection. The 2024 NSECE aims to inform future policy discussions about child care and early education at the local, state, and national levels by providing data to:
Build on the efforts and lessons from the 2012 and 2019 NSECE to allow for comparisons of child care and early education supply and the early care and education workforce from 2012 to 2024
Capture the characteristics of households with children under age 13, such as parental employment status and schedules, preferences and choices of non-parental care, and other factors that affect their need for and access to child care and early education
Document how the field of child care and early education responded to policy initiatives during the period between 2012 and 2024, including changes in supply and demand during the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020

The goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of SafeSpace Sexual Health App, an innovative sexual health promotion program focused on reducing sexual risk factors and promoting sexual and reproductive health and wellbeing among young people assigned female or intersex at birth, particularly Black and/or Latine youth, LGBTQ+ youth, youth in states with high teen birth rates and youth who live in rural communities. This study utilizes a two-arm randomized control trial design to measure impacts of receiving the SafeSpace Sexual Health program compared to receiving a similar-length control app program, SafeSpace General Health that focuses on general health.
The investigators will ask participants to:
Keep the SafeSpace app downloaded to their device and visit the app regularly over the course of 10 weeks.
Provide contact information.
Receive and open app push notifications for 10 weeks (up to 3 per week).
Complete 3 online surveys over a year: baseline, short-term follow-up (10 weeks after baseline), and long-term follow up (9 months after short-term follow-up).
Receive occasional text messages from the study team.