We used the Strong African American Families (SAAF) program as the parenting intervention. SAAF is designed to prevent a cluster of risk behaviors, including alcohol use, marijuana use, and binge drinking (Brody et al., 2004); these behaviors are known to lead to problematic outcomes in adolescence and adulthood (Brook & Newcomb, 1995; Choi, Gilpin, Farkas, & Pierce, 2001). SAAF has been shown to prevent early initiation of substance use (Brody, Murry, Gerrard, et al., 2006) and recently has been shown to interact with a genetic polymorphism in 5HTT, a 22-bp repeat element in the promoter region of that gene, in the prediction of risk behavior initiation (Brody, Beach, Philibert, Chen, & Murry, 2009; Brody, Beach, Philibert, Chen, Lei, et al., 2009). Several papers have documented the SAAF program’s mechanism of action and predictors of response (Beach et al., 2008; Brody, Murry, Gerrard et al., 2006; Brody, Murry, Kogan et al., 2006; Brody et al., 2005; Brody, Murry, Chen, Kogan, & Brown, 2006; Gerrard et al., 2006; Murry et al., 2005). None of these papers, however, addressed the potential role of
