Adolescent years are a time of joy and can represent a challenge for parents and youth, especially for immigrants to the US who are adjusting to their host country. Programs focusing on family skills and positive youth development (PYD) can contribute to youth wellbeing especially, however, few exist for low-income immigrant families. (1) Background: The major goals of this project are to strengthen both PYD and healthy parenting practices by implementing an evidence-informed program, Familias Activas. A theory of change guided the development of Familias Activas in which three factors: parent training, positive youth development, and youth physical activity sessions (soccer) aimed to improve Latinx youth mental health. Youth participated in weekly soccer practices led by trained soccer coaches while parents/caregivers attended parent education. Both sessions lasted eight weeks. (2) Method: We describe the formative stage of the research project as well as the pilot implementation of the Familias Activas program, which provides critical insights for the development of a PYD program. (3) Results: Evaluation surveys were administered to youth and their parents. Thirty youths and sixteen parents completed the survey. The Kidscreen scale had a mean for most items ranging from 3.6 to 4.2. Participating youth were 11 years old and most affirmed they were Latinx. The feasibility program quality mean was 4.2 indicating an overall positive result for the pilot program.. Implications of PYD programs for Latinx youth are discussed. (4) Conclusions: The current paper presents a model for positively influencing the physical and mental wellbeing of Latinx youth and their parents. The model is culturally responsive in its involvement of both parents and youth in programming.

Adolescent obesity prevention programs focusing on Latino fathers may be useful to address Latino adolescent obesity. Adolescent obesity has become an urgent issue because of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, with limited ability to deliver prevention programs in-person. This study aimed to assess the feasibility of a community-based, adolescent obesity prevention program for Latino father–adolescent dyads delivered remotely, adapted from the in-person Padres Preparados, Jóvenes Saludables program. A quasi-experimental design was used to assess the feasibility of the remotely delivered program based on criteria adapted from other feasibility studies of community-based health promotion programs for Latino families. Father–adolescent dyads were recruited at two sites in a Midwestern state during 2020; mothers were also encouraged to participate. Recruitment met the feasibility criteria (65 families expressed interest between August and October) with 26 families participating in this study. The retention ratio (percentage of participants who completed a post-session survey to those who completed the baseline survey) among fathers was acceptable (77%), while a lower percentage of adolescents were retained (68%). The session attendance ratio (number of sessions attended of the eight total sessions offered) was higher among adolescents (88%) and lower among fathers (68%) compared to the criteria. Satisfaction ratings (≥88%) and completeness of data collection at both baseline and post-session survey (≥76%) were acceptable. Favorable results were obtained for parent outcomes, while adolescent outcomes were not favorably changed. This remotely delivered adolescent obesity prevention program was feasible for Latino fathers; however, additional engagement with adolescents may be needed. Adolescent obesity became a more urgent issue because of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic with less physical activity under lockdown, more food insecure families and limited in-person access to programs. Our study concluded that a remotely delivered version of a community-based, adolescent obesity prevention program for Latino father–adolescent dyads (the Padres Preparados, Jóvenes Saludables program) was feasible based on participation, satisfaction and parent outcomes. Additional engagement in activities to improve adolescent health behaviors may be needed to improve the overall effectiveness of the program.

Youth excessive screen time and mental health challenges continue to be a public health concern. Guided by a social cognitive theoretical framework, this study explored the utility of using natural language processing (NLP) topic modeling and qualitative triangulation for understanding how youth-related experiences described in subreddit posts described mental wellbeing from 2017 to 2025 with most of the posts created during the COVID-19 pandemic and afterwards. The study includes 202 r/Teenagers subreddit posts. All posts (n = 202) were analyzed qualitatively, with a subset of these posts that had body text (n = 133) analyzed using topic modeling. A natural language processing latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was performed to analyze the social media posts and generate topics that represent the social media data, with exploratory input from ChatGPT. In addition, the data were analyzed using qualitative open coding in order to compare the LDA results with the qualitative open coding results. The NLP analysis identified seven topics based on coherence scores and the qualitative open coding yielded three emergent themes. Both the NLP and qualitative analyses revealed overlapping topics/themes pertaining to: (1) online school was challenging and youth needed personal connection with others, (2) youth wanted friends and appeared to use screens for social connection, and (3) youth valued creative activities, such as playing games to foster social connection. This research demonstrates the benefits and limitations of using natural language processing topic modeling for analyzing unstructured text data. It also provides important information regarding the usage of screens and youth mental health challenges.

Obesity is a critical public health issue in the United States, which disproportionately affects Latinx youth compared to youth in other racial/ethnic groups. While research suggests fathers can influence their children’s dietary intake and physical activity behaviors, few studies have included fathers in pediatric obesity studies and examined what mechanisms shape youth health outcomes. A greater understanding about fathers’ role modeling and expectations for their youth can provide critical evidence in addressing Latinx youth health outcomes. This research examined the extent to which fathers’ role modeling, expectations, family congruence, and warmth relate to youth energy balance-related behaviors. This study used cross-sectional data collected at baseline before Latinx fathers and children entered an obesity prevention program (n = 193). Latent moderation structural analyses tested the theorized pathways based on Palkovitz’s conceptual framework of father involvement, including youth age and sex as covariates. Fathers’ physical activity role modeling significantly predicted youth moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, p = 0.002. Fathers’ warmth significantly moderated vegetable role modeling, $\mathsf{\beta }$ = 0.263, p = 0.019. By testing Palkovitz’s conceptual framework of father involvement, this study increases the understanding about the theorized pathways between fathers’ role modeling/expectations and youth health outcomes.