On April 4, College of Health and Human Development Dean Craig Newschaffer sat down with Prevention Research Center (PRC) Founding Director Mark Greenberg and Director Max Crowley to reflect on the PRC’s history and accomplishments, as part of his regular “Coffee with Craig” video interview series with leaders in the College.

The trio discussed what prevention research is and how it prevents negative outcomes for children and families.

“It’s both prevention and promotion; you want to prevent problems like child maltreatment, or aggressive behavior or drug use, but we want to promote the well-being of people. Those two go hand-in-hand because when you do the right developmental things to help people move on the pathways towards well-being you also prevent problem behavior at the same time.”

The road to prevention science

As a part of their reflection on the growth of the center, Greenberg and Crowley shared their experiences on how they got involved with prevention science.

Greenberg was a child psychologist when he realized he wanted to treat children on a wider scale. A turning point was when his supervisor explained he would be seeing a deaf 5-year-old girl who was believed to be schizophrenic. At the time, Greenberg was interested in attachment theory and realized the child was falsely diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her attachment process was just different because of her hearing impediment.

“I began to try and develop a curriculum, first in sign language and speech, with deaf children to try and improve their wellbeing, and that was my first attempt in prevention,” Greenberg said. “That curriculum now, that is used with all kinds of children, is used with more than a million children. This clinical work led me to say, ‘wow this is a problem that, if you look upstream, you can prevent this.’”

As for Crowley, he was an undergraduate student when he worked in the Caribbean, studying parents’ perception about their ability to perform the parenting role. For his graduate work, he chose Penn State, and he said his main concern was about getting people to use interventions that worked. He began to focus on the need for prevention infrastructure and public policies that supports prevention.

The origin of the Prevention Research Center

Greenberg was a professor at the University of Washington and had successfully created prevention programs when Penn State contacted him because they wanted him as a professor. He proposed the idea of creating a center for prevention science to fully capture what goes into creating prevention science programs and sustaining them.

Greenberg then reached out to Edna Bennett Pierce, a 1953 alumna of the College of Health and Human Development, who agreed it was a great idea, and so she established an endowment to support the creation of the PRC.

Key connections and collaborations

Working in prevention offers the opportunity to work with many good people, Greenberg noted. Greenberg shared his remarkable experience at a meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama as part of the PRC’s PEACE initiative. He was invited to share his knowledge about emotion regulation methods for children. He shared the method he created called “the turtle” for children to cross their arms over their chests as a practice to regulate their emotions. Actor Richard Gere was in the audience, and during a break in the meeting approached Greenberg with a picture of the Buddha doing the same physical practice.

“Self-control, emotional regulation, is fundamental to the human experience. We’re all working on it all the time,” Greenberg said.

Crowley shared how the PRC has a history of building partnerships with practitioners and government—and increasingly with industry, including a partnership with the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center led by PRC Director of Social Innovation Meg Small and supported by JP Morgan and Wells Fargo.

“How we support entrepreneurship can breaks intergenerational cycles of poverty by giving people control of their finances and creating family businesses,” Crowley said.

“The PRC has so much to offer in the business space. We talk a lot about public health, but economic stability is a huge part of it, and partnerships with business and industry are huge.”

Final reflection 

Crowley expressed optimism in looking forward to future collaborations with alumni and new members joining the PRC.

“We are co-creating this, so if there are ideas that emerge through this outreach, we are very excited about bringing together like-minded people from different areas. Super-excited to go on this journey with you.”

For more information about the PRC’s history and 25th anniversary celebration, please visit our 25th anniversary website. To stay up to date with our latest news, subscribe to our PRC newsletter.