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Highlighting outreach in the Graduate School curriculum By Celena E. Kusch
Dr. Mark Greenberg is holder of the Edna Peterson Bennett Endowed Chair in Prevention Research and founding director of the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development in the College of Health and Human Development. Dave Shelly Penn State Image Resource Center	Speaking at a meeting of the Department of Nutrition Colloquium, Dr. Mark Greenberg demonstrated the central role of outreach partnerships in developing University outreach.   Greenberg holds the Edna Peterson Bennett Endowed Chair in Prevention Research and is the founding director of the Prevention Research Center for the Promotion of Human Development. He addressed an audience of more than 40 graduate students and faculty in nutrition, biobehavioral health and related disciplines. His presentation, titled “Integrating Research and Outreach in Prevention Science,” stressed the importance of “interdisciplinary thinking” in efforts to promote emotional and social competence in children and communities.   The Prevention Research Center addresses issues of violence, delinquency, substance abuse, teen pregnancy and youth development by stimulating interdisciplinary research and collaborative projects with Pennsylvania communities. Greenberg described many of the center’s goals and activities in an effort to expand research and educational opportunities for graduate students attending the seminar.   The center’s “major outreach goal is for counties and communities to come to us for technical assistance,” Greenberg said. As a result, its teaching and research goals also include major outreach components. Teaching activities include a prevention fellowship, which funds a graduate student for a year of study in Pennsylvania community settings. Research activities pair basic research in risks and protective factors and clinical trials of prevention models with collaborations with Pennsylvania communities to design, implement and evaluate programs.   According to Greenberg, prevention research at Penn State has been significantly enhanced by initiating dialogue to bridge the gap between policymakers and basic researchers. Government representatives and school officials want to evaluate program value and effectiveness and to learn how their programs may be improved, he said. Researchers can provide practical answers to those questions and at the same time learn more about the theories behind the particular problem.   He offered a number of examples of state programs currently benefiting from such outreach-based research, including Communities That Care, Head Start, Pennsylvania Abstinence Education and Related Services, Adoption of Drug Abuse Prevention Training, Pregnant and Parenting Teen Initiative, and Education Leading to Employment and Career Training.   “Because we are responsive to the questions they want answered and not just what we want to ask, we have been able to develop good relationships with policymakers in Harrisburg and other communities,” Greenberg explained. “Now we are being invited to assist with proposals for future spending.”   One outcome of the collaborations is the research-based Delinquency Prevention project. Developed with input from the center, the project funds violence prevention programs that use empirically validated models in their design and implementation. In addition, it ensures that original program developers perform training in the communities that adopt their models and has a built-in evaluation component to determine program effectiveness.