Background: Parent training programs are increasingly being offered to the general public with little formal evaluation of their effects. One such program, the Nurtured Heart Approach to parenting (NHA; Glasser and Easley in "Transforming the difficult child: The Nurtured Heart Approach," Vaughan Printing, Nashville, 2008), contains elements with strong theoretical and empirical support, but NHA as a whole remains to be empirically evaluated. Objective: The purpose of the present study was to provide an initial test of the effectiveness of NHA through a quasi-experiment in a community sample. Methods: The present study uses data from 41 five-week NHA parent training courses offered to the general public in a Midwestern U.S. city. Participation in programming occurred through self-selection. An information-only comparison group was recruited from the same community using convenience sampling. Baseline and follow-up questionnaires were completed by trained parents and comparison parents. Results: Program parents reported gains in well-being, while comparison parents remained relatively stable in well-being scores. Parents trained in NHA increased in providing positive attention to their children and decreased in yelling, scolding, and responding with negativity; comparison group parents demonstrated no changes with regard to these practices. At both baseline and follow-up, parents in the comparison group perceived more strengths in their children than did program parents, but at follow-up the difference had narrowed by half of a standard deviation, indicating progress in changing parent perceptions of children. Conclusions: Though the present study is limited by weaknesses in study design, the evidence is compelling enough to suggest further investigation and implementation of NHA with parents.