Reducing premature infants' length of stay and improving parents' mental health outcomes with the Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment (COPE) neonatal intensive care unit program: a randomized, controlled trial.

Although low birth weight premature infants and parents are at high risk for adverse health outcomes, there is a paucity of studies that test early NICU interventions with parents to prevent the development of negative parent-infant interaction trajectories and to reduce hospital length of stay. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of an educational-behavioral intervention program (ie, Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment) that was designed to enhance parent-infant interactions and parent mental health outcomes for the ultimate purpose of improving child developmental and behavior outcomes.