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Connect to Baby: A Pilot Study of a Parenting and Coparenting Program

Connect to Baby: A Pilot Study of a Parenting and Coparenting Program for New Parents

Who can join

2 Months – 40 Years · All sexes · Healthy volunteers welcome

Inclusion Criteria:

* Must be a mother, father (or father figure, including same sex parent and grandparent) of an infant who is 2-24 months.
* Must speak and read English or Spanish with sufficient fluency for completion of consent forms and questionnaires and actively participate in the intervention.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Pre-intervention assessment their score on the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) Interpersonal Violence (IPV) screener (Brown, Lent, Schmidt, \& Sas, 2000) indicates sexual or physical abuse.

About the study

The proposed project is a randomized control trial to assess a novel 6-session parenting and coparenting intervention for low-income parents of infants. Connect to Baby (CTB) will be implemented within one of the largest federally-funded early care and education programs, Early Head Start (EHS), in Washington, DC. To engage both fathers and mothers, CTB recruits parents at the time of birth, capitalizing on the "magic moment" of delivery, and uses father-inclusive digital media content to engage men. A key innovation lies in the introduction and rehearsal of four interaction skills -- Noticing, Following, Talking, and Encouraging (NiFTE, pronounced "Nifty") -- to foster serve-and-return interactions with infants as well as supportive, cooperative coparenting interactions between mothers and fathers. To maximize program uptake, CTB is situated within an early education program parents already trust and attend. Additionally, the study will test hybrid program delivery with both in-person and remote sessions using video-enabled tablets to reduce scheduling and logistical barriers and thereby enhance retention. The specific aims of the project are to assess efficacy of random assignment to Hybrid delivery of CTB relative to EHS as usual at enhancing parenting and coparenting quality and parent and child wellbeing. If demonstrated to be efficacious, this program will provide Early Head Start (and other family-serving agencies) a brief cost-effective, manualized preventive intervention that could be used alone or in conjunction with other services to improve parent functioning and co-parenting, further engage fathers in programming and caregiving, and, ultimately, enhance child development.

What is being tested

• Connect to Baby (behavioral)

Sponsor: Georgetown University · Participants: 200 · Started: Aug 1, 2023

Contact the study team

• Rebecca Ryan, PhD · Phone: 202-687-2215

Official record on ClinicalTrials.gov — NCT06179576

Locations in the U.S.

From ClinicalTrials.gov, data retrieved Sep 30, 2026. Each study sets its own eligibility; the study team decides who can join.