Healthy Passages was a longitudinal study designed to help families, health care providers, schools, and communities develop effective policies and programs to keep children and adolescents healthy. Healthy Passages was designed to assess a cohort of fifth-grade children and one of their parents biennially through age 20 years. Biennial assessments identified the family, peer, school, and community influences on health behaviors, health outcomes, and educational and social outcomes across diverse racial and ethnic populations in three geographic area (Birmingham, Alabama; Houston, Texas; and Los Angeles, California). In addition, as the children were in fifth grade at the start of data collection, this study assessed the effects of major transitional periods (e.g., elementary school to middle school, puberty, high school to college or work) on health and educational outcomes. The study completed an intital enrollment and assessment of a baseline cohort of fifth-grade children. A total of 5,148 fifth-grade children and their parents were assessed between fall 2004 and fall 2011. The same children and their parents were interviewed every two years. Wave II data collection began fall 2006 with the cohort in seventh grade and was completed in summer 2008. Wave III data collection began fall 2009 with the cohort in tenth grade and was completed in fall 2011.  Assessments occurred in the home, school, and community and included: Child computer-assisted personal- and interviewer-administered interviews; child height, weight, and waist circumference; primary caregiver computer-assisted personal- and interviewer-administered interviews; teacher rating of child’s behavior; school administrator interview on school policies; school environment observation; and neighborhood social and physical climate observation.

Healthy Passages would like to thank everyone for being a part of the Healthy Passages project.  Here is an update regarding our progress and future plans.

Your continued participation helped make Healthy Passages a very successful project. Thanks in large part to you and so many participating families; we gained valuable insights about healthy adolescent development that can be used to help improve the lives of future generations of youth and their families. We began this project with about 5,148 families in three geographic area (Birmingham, Alabama; Houston, Texas; and Los Angeles, California) and attempted to interview each family when their child was in grade 5, grade 7, and grade 10. We are grateful that so many families participated in the project and remained involved, across the three waves of data collection.

Healthy Passages was planned to last for several more years; however, due to federal budget cuts, the study is ending in fall 2012.  The end of Healthy Passages is sad news, of course, but not unexpected in view of the reductions in federal spending. It is in no way a reflection on the value of your family’s contributions or of this project.

It is possible that Healthy Passages may be continued in the future. If this does happen, we or our research partners will contact you again. We plan to keep your contact information in a secure database so that we can keep in touch with you and your child about future project activities. If you have any questions about this or do not wish to be re-contacted please let us know by calling us at 205-934-8741 or 205-934-6020.  If you are contacted in the future you can decide to participate or not at that time. Your information is always kept confidential.

Your participation in Healthy Passages made a difference. We learned a great deal from the in-depth information that you and other families provided. To date, Healthy Passages researchers have published papers in many scientific journals. In the coming year, we will focus our efforts on analyzing data and writing scientific papers and we will share the major study results with parents, schools, community leaders, and policy makers at the local, state, and national level, including Congress.

Thank you again for your valuable contributions to Healthy Passages. While there are no definite plans for us to contact you again, it is possible that we may secure funding to interview your family sometime in the future. Until then, we’ll miss seeing you and we wish you all the best.