Increasing Parent Demand for Evidence-Based Practices to Treat Youth Anxiety: The Effect of Parent Key Opinion Leaders

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Anxiety disorders are common among adults and youth and, when left untreated, are associated with several long-term negative sequelae. Although research has identified a number of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for treating youth anxiety and despite large-scale implementation efforts, few youth receive EBPs. Direct-to-consumer marketing offers a different approach to increase provider uptake of EBPs by increasing parent demand for EBPs. Direct-to-consumer initiatives are especially important given patient-barriers that prevent youth from receiving treatment, including lack of parental knowledge of EBPs and stigma associated with mental health treatment. Although parent preferences for receiving information about EBPs vary based on demographic factors and individual experiences, research has not investigated methods of tailoring direct-to- consumer efforts to local contexts. Involving a local parent key opinion leader (KOL) to tailor direct-to- consumer initiatives to local contexts may be an effective strategy to increase parent demand for EBPs. KOLs are credible and trustworthy members of a local community who can use their social influence to disseminate information and validate messages about EBPs. Research indicates that KOLs improve health promotion campaigns, but KOLs have not been studied in the context of increasing parent demand for EBPs. The project will examine the role of KOL participation in conducting outreach presentations to increase parent desire to seek EBPs for their youth’s anxiety. Parent attendees (or primary caregivers; N = 180) will be cluster- randomized by school (6 schools) to one of two different approaches for presentations on EBPs for youth anxiety (90 parents per condition). Both approaches will include community outreach presentations providing information about youth anxiety, effective treatments for youth anxiety, and seeking EBPs for youths. The researcher-only condition will be co-facilitated by two researchers. In the KOL condition, a parent KOL from each local community will be involved in tailoring the content of the presentation to the context of the community, co-facilitating the presentation with a researcher, and endorsing strategies in the presentation that they have found to be helpful. The parent-teacher association from each school will nominate a parent who is well-known and well-respected within their community as the KOL. Parent attendees for both conditions will be recruited by contacting school mental health workers/other school administrators, who will advertise the presentations via their school email list and fliers sent home with children. Parent attendees will complete measures assessing their knowledge of, attitudes towards, and intention to seek EBPs pre- and post- presentation, and they will indicate whether they sought EBPs for their youth at a six-month follow-up. Results of the study will combine quantitative and qualitative approaches to assess the effectiveness of a KOL to increase parent demand for EBPs. A training plan that consists of mentorship, formal classwork, and experiential learning has been designed to develop the applicant’s expertise in the dissemination of EBPs.