A parent training program with the potential to cut $2 million
in annual Medicaid costs will expand to a national scale after
being greenlighted by an Anderson School study.
The study, conducted by a research team led by Anderson senior
lecturer Ariella Herman, involved providing select parents with
basic information on issues such as what to do when a child has a
fever or a cold.
The parents were involved with Head Start, a federal program
whose goal is to prepare children in low-income families for school
by fostering healthy development.
The study was prompted by the finding that parents of Head Start
participants frequently took their children to healthcare providers
and emergency rooms because they did not know how to treat common
childhood illnesses.
“We wanted to see how we could train parents to be more
confident in taking care of their children,” Herman said.
“We found out that they didn’t even know what a high
temperature was, and they would run to the emergency room with a
high temperature of 97 degrees, which is no fever.”
Herman, who has been working with Head Start for the past 12
years, got involved with the study when Johnson and Johnson asked
her to figure out a way to train parents in healthcare
information.
Part of the study involved delivering information about
childhood illnesses via low-level reading ““ primarily a book
by Gloria Mayer titled “What to Do When Your Child Gets
Sick.”
“This book really teaches (parents) the basics of health
care,” Herman said. “When we measured the impact six
months after the training, they were much more
confident.”
In the sixth months following the training, Head Start families
who participated in the training visited emergency rooms 48 percent
less frequently than before the training. Also, 71 percent of
parents said they frequently consulted the Mayer book when
confronted with health care problems.
When implemented on a national level, the training program could
save $2 million in annual costs associated with visits to
physicians and emergency rooms.
“We are going to expand this program. … Our goal is to
train 10,000 parents in three years,” Herman said, adding
that the expansion of the training program will begin this May in
New York.
Parental knowledge of health care is instrumental to the health
of children, said Alicia Garcia, director of a University of
Southern California Head Start program at the St. Vincent Center in
Los Angeles.
She said that in low-income communities, it is important to
provide parents with the information necessary to take care of
their children because that information is not always readily
available.
“(Providing health care information) is just so vital …
because as it is in our community, it’s really scarce,”
Garcia said. “For them to come to Head Start and us to
provide this information to them, that just brings up their morale
that they can do it on their own.”
Head Start centers are the ideal environment to provide basic
healthcare training to low-income parents because the parents need
extra motivation to educate themselves on the care of their
children, Herman said.
Herman added that Head Start sends social workers to visit the
parents to reinforce the training and remind parents who may work
two jobs that they need to take the time to understand
healthcare.”
“We didn’t just do the training and leave them by
themselves to forget about it,” Herman said. “We
collected information month by month to really make sure it would
change the parents’ attitude and understanding.”