Proactive parents are assets to the health and well-being of teens

Abstract

Objectives: To analyze parents who self-identified themselves as being proactive parents (PPs) compared with non-PPs who were queried about their teen's health to understand common adolescent health concerns, parenting practices/behaviors around health, and whether their adolescent had received a preventive care visit in the last year

Study design: Secondary analyses of parents (n = 504) from a nationally representative online panel were surveyed to assess health beliefs/attitudes, perceived adolescent health concerns, frequency of health discussions, topics that pediatricians should discuss, and their teen's last annual visit. Demographics, parental beliefs, frequency of health conversations, and topics that physicians should discuss were compared. Logistic regression determined the likelihood of PPs compared with non-PPs reporting a teen annual health visit within the last year.

Results: Greater education and having a single-child household were slightly more common among PPs. PPs expressed greater concern about their teens getting good grades, getting sick, and their teen's future (P < .001). PPs indicated a greater severity of worry (P < .02) across all health topics and rated issues of sexual health, vaccines, and stress/mental health as very important for pediatricians to discuss (P < .01). Controlling for demographics, PPs were 3.4 (95% CI 2.06-5.56) times more likely to report an annual visit of their teen in the last year.

Conclusion: PPs are an asset to the health promotion and the well-being of their teens. PPs were more likely to have their teen receive an annual visit, report more frequent discussions about health, and place a high value on physician discussions about health.