Description/Overview: The high prevalence of overweight/obesity and mental health disorders in adolescents call for the urgent testing of theory-based preventive interventions that can be easily incorporated into high school curriculums. Overweight teens have multiple adverse health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, poor social skills and academic problems. Despite the prevalence of these problems, there are few rigorously conducted experimental studies that have tested health promotion interventions to improve the healthy lifestyle behaviors, psychosocial outcomes and academic performance of at-risk adolescents. The purpose of this symposium is to describe the immediate and six month post-intervention findings from a randomized controlled trial that tested the efficacy of the COPE (Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment) Healthy Lifestyles TEEN (Thinking, Emotions, Exercise, Nutrition) Program, versus an attention control program (i.e., Healthy Teens), on the healthy lifestyle behaviors, psychosocial outcomes and academic performance of 779 fourteen to 16 year old high school adolescents who are predominantly Hispanic in the Southwest Region of the United States. In the first paper, differences between the COPE and attention control teens on immediate and 6 month post-intervention outcomes will be presented. The second paper will describe intervention fidelity by the teachers who were delivering the COPE program and lessons learned to improve fidelity in future studies. The third paper will describe themes in the adolescents and parents’ evaluation feedback of the program. Implications for practice and future research will be highlighted throughout the presentations.

Learner Objective #1: Describe the immediate and 6-month findings along with teen/parent evaluation feedback from the COPE Healthy Lifestyles TEEN randomized controlled trial.

Learner Objective #2: Discuss the clinical practice and research implications from the COPE trial.