Intervention Program Gives Kids More Than a Head Start

Some studies have found that Head Start, the federally run program designed to improve the academic performance of low-income preschoolers, has made a long-term difference in the lives of many since its creation 44 years ago. Now a different, more expansive intervention that targets older disadvantaged children in first through sixth grades, is also promising long-lasting rewards.

The name of the private sector-developed intervention—under study for more than two decades —is the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP). The long-term research effort was launched in 1981 by principal investigator J. David Hawkins, Ph.D., the endowed professor of prevention at the University of School of Washington Social Work, and his research team.

The SSDP's intervention consists of teaching the teachers and the parents of disadvantaged pupils how to help these children achieve not just academic success, but also to help them appreciate the importance of sexual education and maintaining optimum mental health—for example, how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, how to avoid substance abuse, and how to avoid antisocial behaviors.

To determine the efficacy of the intervention, Hawkins and his coworkers embarked on a longitudinal study in which some 150 disadvantaged pupils in Seattle public schools received the SSDP intervention for six years, and some 200 disadvantaged students of same age did not.

Hawkins and his colleagues then followed individuals in the intervention and the control groups until they reached age 27. At that point, the researchers looked to see whether there were differences in educational, sexual, or mental health outcomes between the two groups.

They found that there were. By age 27, a significantly greater number of children in the intervention group had achieved more education, were earning more money, and had significantly less sexually transmitted disease than their counterparts in the control group had. Furthermore, significantly fewer in the intervention group than in the control group had met criteria for one or more of four DSM-IV mental disorders—generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, social phobia, or posttraumatic stress disorder—during the previous year.

So the intervention affected mental health, sexual health, and educational and economic achievement 15 years after the intervention ended,” Hawkins and his team concluded in the December 2008 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

However, where substance abuse and crime were concerned, no significant differences could be found between the intervention and control groups. On the other hand, it's possible that the intervention did make a difference, but that it was unable to be discerned, Hawkins told Psychiatric News.

The intervention format was implemented two years ago in another area of the United States, in Bedford County, Pennsylvania. It was implemented in the county's 12 grade schools with some 300 teachers and 3,000 pupils—under the rubric Raising Healthy Children.

“We are not doing original research,” said Lyn Skillington, executive director of Unified Family Services Systems in Bedford and head of the social development intervention there. “However, we are doing a fairly rigorous evaluation, although without control groups, and after two years are finding significant positive impacts in all segments of the populations served: children, parents, and teachers.”

The study by Hawkins and his team was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

An abstract of “Effects of Social Development Intervention in Childhood 15 Years Later,” is posted at<http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/162/12/1133>. More information about the Raising Healthy Children project can be accessed at<www.ufssbedford.org> by clicking on “Raising Healthy Children.” ▪