ORIGINAL PAPER Examining the Fit of Evidence-Based Parenting Programs in Low- Resource Settings: A Survey of Practitioners in Panama Anilena Mejia • Rachel Calam • Matthew R. Sanders Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract Several international organizations have sug- gested the need for disseminating existing evidence-based parenting interventions into low-resource settings of the world in order to prevent societal difficulties such as violence. Before dissemination efforts take place, it is important to examine the fit of existing interventions in these contexts. In the present study, 80 practitioners from low-resource com- munities in Panama, Central America, were surveyed in order to explore their views on materials, principles and strategies of an evidence-based parenting program, the Triple P Positive Parenting Program. This study is part of a larger project in which cultural relevance was also explored from parents’ perspective, instruments were translated and validated, and a RCT was carried out to determine efficacy. Practitioners in the present study were psychologists, teachers, social workers and learning disability specialists based in school settings. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data and regression analyses were carried out in order to determine whether socio-demographic variables predicted acceptability scores. Scores for cultural relevance and usefulness of the program were high. A sample of material was found to be interesting, familiar, and acceptable. All practitioners (100 %) expressed a need to implement a parenting program in their community. Only being female and greater hours of consultation per week were associated with greater acceptability. These results have the potential to inform implementation efforts in Panama and the study offers a methodology which can be used to explore the relevance of other programs in other low-resource settings. Keywords Cultural relevance Á Dissemination Á Low resource settings Á Parenting programs Á Prevention Introduction Parenting programs have been recognized as effective inter- ventions for preventing a variety of difficulties in children such as alcohol and drug use (Petrie et al. 2007), emotional difficulties (Cartwright-Hatton et al. 2011) and physical dif- ficulties such as obesity (West et al. 2010). Recent studies show that they are effective not only at the individual/com- munity level, but also have the potential to impact at the population level as public health interventions in, for exam- ple, prevention of child maltreatment (Prinz et al. 2009). There are a variety of programs and approaches, but recent efforts have been made to recognize those programs with a strong body of empirical research that can therefore be con- sidered as evidence-based (CDC 2010; UNODC 2009a). There is now an international movement towards the dissemination of existing evidence-based parenting pro- grams into low-resource settings such as low and middle- income countries (LMIC). The World Health Organization (2013) recently recognized that in order to prevent violence in LMIC, existing evidence-based parenting programs should be disseminated and implemented. However, two recent systematic reviews suggest that there is few evi- dence regarding the effectiveness and ‘‘fit’’ of programs in these settings (Knerr et al. 2013; Mejia et al. 2012). Few randomized controlled trials of parenting programs were A. Mejia (&) Á R. Calam School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK e-mail: anilena.mejia@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk; anilena.mejia@manchester.ac.uk R. Calam e-mail: rachel.calam@manchester.ac.uk M. R. Sanders The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 123 J Child Fam Stud DOI 10.1007/s10826-014-0028-z