Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities: The Impact of the Utah

Community Voices Section

Submission Date: March 19, 2025; Acceptance Date: March 28, 2025; Early Access: April 1, 2025

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Title: Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities: The Impact of the Utah Valley University’s Stronger Families Project

Author: Julie K. Nelson, Kaicee Postler, and Rachel Arocho, Utah Valley University

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Abstract: Families need support so that communities remain strong. The Stronger Families Project (SFP) at Utah Valley University is a unique and powerful resource in the communities surrounding the university. Families attend a free, eight-week, evidence-based family life education program aimed at teaching skills to parents, teens, and children that are necessary for healthy family life. The program is rooted in Family Systems Theory, offering tailored age-based classes and a whole-family class to address mental health and developmental wellbeing of both the individual and family unit. Classes are taught in English and Spanish by interns from family science and related majors, and the program is further supported by service-learning students performing community service hours. In more than 15 years of service, SFP has supported over one thousand families and trained hundreds of students to deliver effective and impactful family programming to their communities. Ongoing research measuring positive outcomes for community participants shows statistically significant results for all variables.

Keywords: Family Life Education, Community Programming, Mental Health, Parent and Relationship Education, Family Systems, Community Impact, Cultural Relevance

doi.org/10.70175/socialimpactjournal.2025.1.1.4

Suggested Citation:

Nelson, Julie K., Postler, Kaicee, and Arocho, Rachel. (2025). Strengthening families, strengthening communities: The impact of the Utah Valley University’s Stronger Families Project. Transformative Social Impact: A Journal of Community-Based Teaching and Research, 1(1). doi.org/10.70175/socialimpactjournal.2025.1.1.4