Smart Parents – Safe and Healthy Kids (SPSHK)
Smart Parents – Safe and Healthy Kids (SPSHK)
Parents have a responsibility to create a happy, healthy, and safe environments for their children. Many parent-education programs exist giving parents the skills to do this, but no parent-education program exists for the prevention of CSA specifically. Capitalizing on skills taught in existing parent-education programs, we seek to efficiently and economically help parents prevent their child from experiencing sexual victimization by teaching them about children’s healthy sexual development, facilitating parent-child communication regarding sex and sexual abuse, and enacting measures to ensure their children’s safety (i.e., monitoring and vetting of babysitters). SPSHK was designed as a single additional session added toward the end of an evidence-based parent education program. SPSHK aims to improve parents’ knowledge about sexual development (i.e., demonstration of age-appropriate and inappropriate behaviors), facilitate parent-child communication about sex and CSA, and empower parents to take charge of their children’s safety (i.e., vetting potential babysitters, monitoring exposure to media).
Research Team
![Profile photo for Kate Guastaferro, Ph.D., MPH](https://www.solutionsnetwork.psu.edu/assets/uploads/news/_w1440/kate-guastaferro.jpg)
Kate Guastaferro, Ph.D., MPH
Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, NYU School of Global Public Health
Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement and Dissemination of Intervention Optimization