The Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development is established through the vision of Founding Director Mark T. Greenberg and the generosity of 1953 Penn State graduate Edna Bennett Pierce. Her endowment to fund the PRC transformed the field of prevention science as the PRC has become a global leader in prevention research, technical assistance, training, policy, and outreach.

The Harrisburg Center for Healthy Child Development (CHCD) is established in downtown Harrisburg, as a unit of the Penn State Center for Prevention Research. The Harrisburg CHCD aims to work with local schools, private and public agencies to assist in designing and improving programs to impact the lives of children and youth.

The Capital Area Early Childhood Training Institute is established with the support of the Greater Harrisburg Foundation, The Capital Area Funders Group, and the State of Pennsylvania. Richard Fiene is the Founding Director; Barbara Carl is the Assistant Director.

Scientists at Iowa State University and Penn State develop the PROSPER (PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience) prevention framework. PROSPER has served more than 100,000 middle school students and has been shown to reduce substance use and have other positive health outcomes into adulthood. Key leaders at Penn State have included Mark Greenberg, Karen Bierman, Janet Welsh, Daniel Perkins, Mark Feinberg, Greg Fosco, Sarah Chilenski, and Max Crowley. Funders for PROSPER have included the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The Prevention Research Center, the Office of Child Development (University of Pittsburgh), and the Center for Child Policy (Temple University) form a partnership called the University Children’s Policy Partnership (UCPP). The purpose of UCPP is to work collaboratively with Pennsylvania state agencies and the Legislature to contribute balanced information and scholarly skills to the policy process of funding child and family programs in a non-partisan and non-advocacy manner.

Sir Michael Rutter, Research Professor of Developmental Psychotherapy at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry, delivers the first Bennett Lecture in Prevention Science, an annual fall event to honor worldwide leaders in prevention research. He spoke about the prevention of psychological dysfunction. The Lectureship is made possible with funds given by Edna and her first husband, C. Eugene Bennett.

Mark Feinberg creates Family Foundations, a groundbreaking educational program that helps couples expecting their first child build supportive, long-term co-parenting relationships. Now adapted for use and research in countries on five continents, Family Foundations has been shown by research to reduce parental distress, depression, conflict, and violence. It has been adapted for teens, low-income couples, heavy alcohol users, parents of a child with autism, and military families. Michelle Hostetler plays a pivotal role in implementation. Family Foundations has been funded by several NIH programs, foundations, and nonprofit organizations.

Linda Caldwell and Ed Smith begin to pilot the innovative Healthwise South Africa for high school students living in low-income areas in the Western Cape, to address HIV/AIDS, pregnancy, and substance use, while promoting positive use of leisure time. The program spanned 15 years, reaching more than 16,000 youth. Positive outcomes from the program include lower rates of risky sexual behavior, higher rates of abstinence in the past 6 months, higher perceived availability of condoms, and significant findings for the leisure outcomes; for example, the adolescents who reported becoming more bored during leisure between 8th and 9th grade reported higher levels of substance use. (Funder: NIDA)

Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker creates the Early Childhood Care and Education Task Force, which was empowered to provide recommendations for the future of early childhood services in Pennsylvania. Fred (“Mister”) Rogers is the honorary chairperson. Mark Greenberg and the PRC led the task force with the UCPP partners (faculty from Temple University and University of Pittsburgh), which created five reports on existing and potential services for children from birth to age 8 and made recommendations for improving educational opportunities for children. Participating Penn State researchers also include Richard Fiene and E. Michael Foster.

The Family Life Project – a collaboration between Penn State and the University of North Carolina, is funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development to study how growing up in rural areas with high poverty rates might influence readiness for school. An interdisciplinary team of investigators has been in contact with a cohort of over a thousand children from birth through the teen years—with measurement of child, family, and school functioning each year. The project joined the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) in 2016. Mark Greenberg initially led the project at Penn State; Lisa Gatzke-Kopp assumed the leadership role in 2016.

In coordination with the Harrisburg School District, Dauphin County, and other community agencies, the PRC develops a coordinated and comprehensive plan for prevention services in the Harrisburg School District. Aspects of the plan are funded by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Justice. Celene Domitrovich and Meg Small lead the initiative.

Karen Bierman and PRC researchers develop Head Start REDI, an intervention building upon the existing Head Start program, to improve social and emotional skills, as well as early literacy and learning skills. This program — which shows the value of systematically enriching social and emotional learning in families exposed to adversity and poor access to resources — is still ongoing. The REDI program has reached hundreds of preschool-aged children and their families, both across Pennsylvania and in tribal communities in South Dakota, and provided professional development support to dozens of early childhood educators. This work was funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The PRC and The Methodology Center receive funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to start the Prevention and Methodology Training Program (PAMT). This T32 training grant was begun by Mark Greenberg and Linda M. Collins and continues today under the leadership of Jennifer Maggs and Stephanie Lanza. PAMT trains prevention scientists in advanced statistical methodology to address pressing problems related to substance use and addiction. This long-standing program has helped launch the careers of over 100 substance use researchers across the U.S.

The PRC received the contract from the PA State Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Programs to develop, deploy and sustain a State Epidemiological Workgroup on youth substance use and abuse.

Jennifer Maggs, Eva Lefkowitz, and Meg Small lead the National University Life Study (ULS), which looked at personal and situational influences on college students’ alcohol use, sexual behaviors, and daily experiences. Over 700 Penn State students completed up to 98 days of web surveys across 7 semesters of college, yielding over 55,000 daily reports. The ULS’ intensive data has provided excellent training for about 30 PhD and postdoc-level prevention scientists and generated more than 50 peer-reviewed papers. Highly-cited findings directly relevant to prevention include students drinking less on nights they attended alcohol-free campus programs, eating fewer fruits and vegetables after moving off-campus, and viewing many consequences of drinking and sex as predominantly positive and desirable. (Funder: NIAAA)

Celene Domitrovich, Mark Greenberg, and Rebecca Cortes publish their paper on the PATHS Pre-K/K program, which they developed in collaboration with the Capital Area Head Start in Harrisburg. PATHS helps young children to improve their social and emotional competence. The program has now been used for over 40 years in more than 20 countries in over 5,000 schools. It is the universal elementary school-based curriculum that has been the most carefully studied in the field of prevention.

The PRC received a $3.9 million state grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Health for the PATHS to Success Project to study interventions to prevent aggression in young children. The Penn State project, to be performed in partnership with the Harrisburg School District and Hempfield Behavioral Health, focuses on gaining a better understanding of factors related to violent and aggressive behavior in children when they first enter school.

Brian Bumbarger and Mark Greenberg establish the EPISCenter (now EPIS) to help communities successfully implement and sustain evidence-based prevention programs in all 67 counties of Pennsylvania. Now led by Janet Welsh, EPIS assists more than 1,000 professionals and volunteers each year who are dedicated to helping Pennsylvania’s youth navigate challenges and learn the skills they need not just to survive, but to thrive. EPIS partners include the PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency, PA Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, PA Department of Human Services, PA Department of Education, the Commonwealth Prevention Alliance, and the PA Juvenile Court Judges Commission.

The Power of Parents Handbook, used to help parents have ongoing, intentional conversations about the dangers and consequences of underage drinking, is developed by Robert Turrisi. The handbook has reached a new family every 15 minutes for a decade, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and is available in English and Spanish.

The PRC publishes The Economic Return on PCCD’s Investment in Research-based Programs: A Cost-benefit Assessment of Delinquency Prevention in Pennsylvania. PRC researchers assessed the potential return on investment for seven evidence-based programs used by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency to reduce delinquency, violence and aggression, drug and alcohol use, and other youth behavior problems, and to promote positive youth development and stronger families and communities. Based on projections from prior research on economic impact for these evidence-based programs, potential return on investment in PA was found to range up to over $25 per dollar invested, with overall costs savings as great as $130 million for a single program over time. The report’s authors are Damon Jones, Brian Bumbarger, Mark Greenberg, Peter Greenwood, and Sandee Kyler.

Established by Mark Greenberg and Tish Jennings, PEACE supports interdisciplinary scholarly activities ranging from basic research on the development of awareness, compassion, and empathy, to the design and rigorous evaluation of interventions intended to foster these attributes in individuals and relationships. PEACE was the first integrated research and outreach program at a major university that focuses on the study and cultivation of these qualities in children, youth, and families. Rob Roeser became the PEACE director in 2016 when he was named the PRC’s first Bennett Pierce Professor of Caring and Compassion.

The Prevention Research Center moves from South Henderson Building to its new home in the Biobehavioral Health Building and receives its new name, the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center. Large enough to accommodate all PRC’s researchers, the new space helps to foster new research collaborations and expands the Center’s presence on campus.

Sarah Chilenski conducts the process evaluation of the first demonstration site of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Evidence2Success framework in Providence, RI. The framework provides cities and states with a road map for involving communities in making smart investments in evidence-based programs that support kids’ well-being. Additional communities across the country joined in 2015 and 2018, with six communities implementing the framework and participating in the Penn State evaluation. In 2023, the PRC began publishing a series of five collective change action guides for communities that are based on more than a decade of experience on what works to establish and support successful community coalitions.

Established by Diana [Denni] Fishbein, the NPSC is the first organization in the U.S. to translate prevention science in formats accessible and relevant to policymakers, practitioners, educators, clinicians, and the public. Today, the NPSC is comprised of over 1,000 members across universities, organizations, institutes, and foundations with a shared vision for cross-sector preventive and health promotional strategies into policies to create more equitable, responsive, and effective societal systems and community backbone supports.

Using a pilot grant from the Doris Duke Foundation, Taylor Scott and Max Crowley evaluate an innovative model for connecting researchers and policymakers with the goal of increasing policymakers’ use of research evidence. In 2018, with the support of W.T. Grant Foundation, they conducted the first randomized controlled trial of the US Congress. The trial provided the first experimental evidence that congressional lawmakers’ use of evidence could be systematically improved through behavioral intervention—finding an over 20% increase of research evidence in child and family legislation. Since then, the team has conducted more than 100 experimental studies of the use of research with policy and research communities around the country.

Max Crowley leads the creation of the Data Accelerator at Penn State, the first research infrastructure dedicated to the use and study of administrative data. It houses sensitive health data on more than 100 million people in the U.S. and provides unique research insights that have guided investments by policymakers around the world. The initial Data Accelerator team included Xueyi (Steven) Xing, Ashley Stauffer, Niki Page, Chris Greiner, and Bethany Shaw.

Richard Davidson, a leading scholar best known for his groundbreaking work studying emotion and the brain, delivers the 1st Annual Lecture on Compassion, which was made possible by a generous endowment by Mark Greenberg and Christa Turksma. The Lectureship showcases the importance of compassion and caring in healthy development by showcasing the findings and perspectives of outstanding researchers and practitioners in the areas of awareness, compassion, and empathy.

Rob Roeser, along with colleagues at the University of Virginia and University of Wisconsin-Madison, develop a course for college students on the art and science of human flourishing, which aims to help students contemplate the purpose of their lives and education, and what it means not just to survive, but to thrive and flourish. Research has shown that the course improves attention skills, social-emotional skills, and perspectives on flourishing, while also reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) is a program developed Tish Jennings, Christa Turskma, and Richard Brown that offers teachers and administrators tools and resources for reducing stress, preventing burnout, enlivening teaching, and helping students thrive socially, emotionally, and academically. PRC researchers, including Sebrina Doyle Fosco and Mark Greenberg, conducted a randomized controlled trial on CARE that shows the program to have positive impacts on psychological and physical distress for teachers — especially emotional exhaustion, a component of burnout. They also found downstream effects on classroom emotional support and productivity. [Funder: Institute of Educational Sciences]

Stephanie Lanza launches a new research-practice partnership called the Penn State CORE (College Relationships and Experiences) project. CORE is a longitudinal study of the experiences and well-being of more than 4,000 Penn State undergraduates, with students from all 20 undergraduate campuses participating. This study gives voice to students as they share about their lives as Penn State undergrads, informs ways that Penn State can enhance their experiences, and serves as a gateway for students to engage more closely with Penn State research studies.

Kimberly Mallett and Robert Turrisi, in concert with June Robinson of Northwestern University, develop and evaluate a highly successful training for physicians on how to talk with their patients about skin cancer prevention. Physicians are trained to use motivational interviewing techniques using six scripted questions that explore options with patients in determining their own sun protection behaviors. This approach produces lasting behavior change, with fewer sunburns and greater patient satisfaction months later. Their findings are published in journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Dermatology.

Continuing to affirm the Center’s dedication to evaluation research during epidemiological crises, several researchers work to gauge COVID’s impacts on at-risk families and communities. Mark Feinberg, Samantha Tornello, Greg Fosco, Steffany Fredman, Christian Connell, and others assess parent and child functioning, stressors, and conflict. Meg Small is a primary researcher on Penn State’s COVID-19 Data for Action team – a multidisciplinary team of Penn State researchers who gathered and evaluated data on the epidemic’s impact on college students and the Penn State community. Stephanie Lanza also led research on the well-being of Penn State students during the pandemic.

Project Co-Use was launched by PRC researcher Ashley Linden-Carmichael and co-investigator Stephanie Lanza. Project Co-Use followed 154 young adults who reported heavy alcohol use and co-use of alcohol and cannabis (i.e., use of both substances so that effects overlapped) for 14 days. Results revealed that days on which young adults co-used alcohol and cannabis had more alcohol-related harms (e.g., blacking out from drinking, acute physical effects) than days when they used only alcohol. These results pointed to the need to avoid siloed explorations of substance use and to consider, instead, the individual and combined roles of all substances.

The Group to Reduce Racial Inequities in Prevention (GRRIP) is formed by PRC faculty and staff. GRRIP’s vision is to lead efforts at the PRC to eliminate racism, embrace racial and ethnic diversity, and promote equity and inclusion across people of all backgrounds, both within the PRC and in community-engaged research. In a few years, GRRIP established an annual lecture on diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging (DEIB), regular roundtable discussions on DEIB with leaders in prevention science, led a book club for the PRC community on topics related to anti-racism, and created a program to fund early career researchers investigating topics related to health equity that is now being offered by the College of Health and Human Development and open to scholars University-wide.

Recognizing the value of the Administrative Data Accelerator, Research-to-Policy Collaboration and economic evaluation activities in the PRC, the Penn State Social Science Research Institute and College of Health and Human Development create the Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative to house university efforts around the science of scientific impact and make PRC infrastructure available to faculty across Penn State. The EIC supported over 100 faculty in its first three years in operation.

Kevin and Karen Lynch create the Kevin and Karen Lynch Fund for the Program on Empathy, Awareness, and Compassion in Education (PEACE). Their philanthropy has allowed Rob Roeser and team to make courses available to Penn State students across the Commonwealth that train young people in the skills of empathy, awareness, and compassion. Their gift has also supported the development of a robust research program to evaluate the courses’ impacts on students.

Greg Fosco and Stephanie Lanza establish the Annual Lecture on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Prevention Science and Practice to honor a leading scholar in a field related to health equity. The first lecturer is Janean Dilworth-Bart, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who presented “Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Perspective on Anti-Black Racism and the Role of Prevention Science.” She is a Ph.D. graduate in Human Development and Family Studies and a graduate of Penn State’s Prevention and Methodology Training program.

Building on work accomplished by Meg Small with corporate and small business leaders, and with LaunchBox and Penn State’s entrepreneurial initiatives, Penn State’s Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative, directed by Max Crowley, establish a partnership with the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center to increase equity in the private sector. With support from the JP Morgan Chase and the Wells Fargo Foundations, their work has identified insights and solutions around support increasing equitable entrepreneurship and demonstrating the power of industry partners for fueling PRC science.

EPIS launches the new Prevention Learning Portal – an online platform offering resources, training, and self-paced online courses to the behavioral health workforce focused on prevention and implementation science. These online courses are available to anyone free of charge and are designed to provide broad and equitable reach to the prevention workforce.