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2011 AWARDS PRESENTATION

SPR 2011 AWARDS PRESENTATION
at 19th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC

Society for Prevention Research
2011 Awards
June 2, 2011

The Presidential Award is given to those who have made a major lifetime contribution toprevention science research.

This year we are pleased and proud to present the Presidential Award to Dr. Mary Ann Pentz, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Director of the Institute for Prevention Research at the University of Southern California. For over 20 years, Dr. Pentz’s pioneering research and program development have focused on community and policy approaches to tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse prevention in youth. Her early findings contributed to the formulation of a U.S. Senate bill and use of evidence-based criteria for appropriating funds for prevention under the Safe and Drug Free Schools Act.

The best illustration of her pioneering work is Project STAR. Dr. Pentz directed and began publishing on Project STAR in the mid 1980s, with papers addressing each of the thorny programmatic and methodological issues in this area of research, collectively amounting to a major body of groundbreaking work. The published positive, long-term outcomes of Project STAR, along with recognitions like the Congressional Exemplary Award for Prevention, testify to her innovative and effective foundation work in community-based prevention. Project STAR was the beginning of a long line of leading community and policy research. More recently, Dr. Pentz has broken new ground with her etiological work on the common risk and protective factors in drug and obesity prevention, drawing upon that work to design her new studies. She complements this with projects that chart new territory in approaches for changing the built environment, in order to promote healthy lifestyles. Dr. Pentz is a former member of the Society for Prevention Research Board of Directors and a current member of the SPR Mapping Advances in Prevention Science Task Force Type 2 Translational Research.

The Nan Tolber Award for Review of the Prevention Science Literature is given for  contributions to the summarization or articulation of the empirical evidence relevant to prevention science.

This year we are pleased to present the Nan Tobler Award for Review of the Prevention Science Literature to Dr. David MacKinnon, Foundation Professor, Arizona State University
for his body of work in statistical approaches to mediation analysis. Mediation is at the heart of much conceptual thinking in prevention science. In particular, nearly all evidence-based preventive interventions rest on the foundation of a mediation model. For more than 20 years, Dr. MacKinnon has been working on improving statistical methods for fitting and testing mediation models in empirical data. His work has been programmatic and accessible. Examples of his contributions include improved effect size estimates, multilevel mediation models, and Bayesian approaches to mediation analysis. Thanks to him, prevention scientists today can conduct much better and more reliable mediation analyses than they could 20 years ago. Dr. MacKinnon’s 2008 book Introduction to Statistical Mediation Analysis was an instant classic and is on the shelf of any serious data analyst. In addition to his methodological work, Dr. MacKinnon has published many examples of innovative mediation analyses, some of which are based on data from his own prevention research. Dr. MacKinnon’s work in mediation has moved the field of prevention science forward tremendously. Dr. MacKinnon is a former member of the SPR Board of Directors, and has been an Associate Editor of Prevention Science for many years.

The Prevention Science Award is given for the work of developing and testing prevention strategies.

This year we are pleased to present the Prevention Science award to Dr. Leslie Leve. Dr. Leve is currently a Senior Scientist and Science Director for the Oregon Social Learning Center. She also holds a Senior Scientist appointment at the Center for Research to Practice in Eugene and is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Research on Children and Families at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Dr. Leve’s work has spanned a number of key areas in prevention science and has exemplified the highest level of scholarship. First, she leads a team of eminent scientists on a multi-site adoption study. This is a genetically informed longitudinal study that follows participants beginning shortly after birth. This research will provide exciting and new information about the interplay between genes and environment, and has already begun to build a base for complete developmental models that will inform the next iteration of early prevention strategies. Second, she has expanded prevention and treatment models that were developed for adolescent boys to adolescent girls in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. This work led directly to an RCT showing that Multidimensional Foster Care for girls was highly successful in reducing both subsequent incarceration and pregnancies in delinquent girls. It also led directly to an RCT, currently underway, testing a preventive intervention for girls in foster care. The contributions she is making through her scientific work have the potential for strong and enduring public health impacts.

The Public Service Award is given in recognition of extensive and effective advocacy for prevention science and research based programs.

This year we are pleased to present the Public Service Award to Mr. Rick Cady, who serves as the Prevention Manager of the Addictions and Mental Health Division of the Oregon Health Authority. He also is the National Prevention Network (NPN) representative for the State of Oregon. He serves as a co-chair of the Research and Evaluation Committee of the NPN and as a member of the planning committee for the Network’s annual research conference. In these capacities, Mr. Cady regularly attends the meetings of the Board of Directors of the Society for Prevention Research, functioning as a liaison between the two organizations. Mr. Cady has spent most of his career in the addictions prevention and treatment fields. He began as a clinician providing services to youth and adults in both correctional settings and in the community. In the mid-1980s, he served as the State Prevention Coordinator with the Oregon Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs. His strong commitment to prevention and helping communities select and effectively implement evidence-based interventions was fostered through his experiences working with Drs. J. David Hawkins and Michael Arthur. He worked with them both as an intervention specialist with the Community Youth Development Study, which formed the foundation for the Communities That Care model, and as the Director of Training and Development for implementing the Communities That Care program and Preparing for the Drug Years® (now Guiding Good Choices) before returning to his position with the Oregon Health Authority in 2008. In that role Mr. Cady has been a strong advocate for moving prevention science forward and for linking science to practice.

The Community, Culture, and Prevention Science Award is given for contributions to the field of prevention science in the area of community and culture.

This year we are pleased to present the Community, Culture, and Prevention Science Award to Dr. William Beardslee. Dr. Beardslee is Academic Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Gardner-Monks Professor of Child Psychiatry, Children’s Hospital, Boston. Dr. Beardslee has conducted groundbreaking, evidence-based studies over the course of many years that have demonstrated the effectiveness of early interventions for the prevention of mood disorders in children who are at risk for these illnesses. He has the unique ability to take preventive interventions to the next level by looking at different culture and community adaptations. Dr. Beardslee’s Family Talk Intervention was tested in a randomized trial that demonstrated sustained gains in parents and children four and a half years after enrollment. Dr. Beardslee then conducted a randomized trial showing that the intervention could be adapted and effective for poor, inner city, single parent, African-American families. He later adapted the model for Latino families. His Family Talk Intervention has now been implemented in Holland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, and Costa Rica. His most recent work has continued to explore a different way of disseminating his evidence-based preventions by using web-based training. In collaboration with colleagues at UCLA, he also has applied the principles of Family Talk and intervention dissemination to a novel program serving military families facing multiple deployments.

The Translational Science Award recognizes contributions to the field of prevention science in the area of Type 1 or Type 2 translational research.

This year we are pleased to present the Translational Science Award to Dr. Luanne Rohrbach. Dr. Rohrbach is an Associate Professor of Research at the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the University of Southern California. She has been conducting Type 2 translational research for over 20 years, long before this area of research was recognized as important by the field of prevention or the National Institutes of Health. The majority of her research has been in the context of school-based drug prevention studies. Dr. Rohrbach’s earliest work focused on the critical process components of these programs and predictors of program integrity. She has studied all phases of the implementation process from adoption through dissemination, and is currently moving into examining the important issue of sustainability. Dr. Rohrbach has also conducted an implementation study that used a randomized design to test the effectiveness of two different program delivery models. This type of study is still rare, even though it is the kind that is needed in order to advance the field’s understanding of implementation and dissemination. Dr. Rohrbach is a former member of the SPR Board of Directors. She serves as co-chair of the SPR Mapping Advances in Prevention Science Task Force on Type 2 Translational Research.

The International Collaborative Prevention Research Award recognizes contributions to the field of prevention science in the area of international collaboration.

This year we are pleased to present the International Collaborative Prevention Research Award to Dr. Gregor Burkhart. Dr. Burkhart is Scientific Analyst for Prevention at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Lisbon, Portugal. Dr. Burkhart has been instrumental in bringing US and EU prevention researchers together. One of these collaborations has been The US-EU Cross-National Study on Variation of Receptivity to Substance Use Prevention Interventions funded by both EU organizations and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In addition, Dr. Burkhart has focused on integrating the prevention research community in Europe. His efforts and those of a group of European prevention researchers have resulted in the creation of the EU-Society for Prevention Research (EU-SPR) that was established in 2010 and had its first meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In addition to these efforts, in his role as Scientific Analyst for Prevention, Dr. Burkhart has documented prevention programming across Europe and has highlighted the outcomes of prevention research trials. He has been actively involved with the coordination of a large cross-national substance use prevention study, the EU-Drug Abuse Prevention trial (EU-Dap) that assessed the effectiveness of a school-based prevention curriculum, Unplugged, that was delivered in seven European countries. This program is now being disseminated across Europe.

The Service to SPR Award is given in recognition of outstanding service to the organization.

This year we are pleased to present the Service to SPR Award to Dr. Ty Ridenour. Dr. Ridenour is Research Associate Professor and Director of the Translation Module of the Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research (CEDAR) at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Ridenour is Chair of the Early Career Preventionists Network (ECPN) and is a Board Member of the Society for Prevention Research. Dr. Ridenour served two years as ECPN chair-elect and as chair from 2009 through 2011. As ECPN chair Dr. Ridenour has led an especially energetic and committed group of early career preventionist researchers. He also chaired the ECPN Secondary Analysis Data Base Task Force which in 2009 sponsored a networking opportunity among ECPNers and a dozen major data set representatives and in 2010 sponsored a preconference workshop. Dr. Ridenour is also a member of the SPR Mapping Advances in Prevention Science Task Force on biological and psychosocial prevention research. We thank Dr. Ridenour for his contributions to SPR and the ECPN over the past four years.

The ECPN Early Career Award is given in recognition of a person early in their career in prevention who has shown a commitment to prevention science through outstanding contributions to research, policy, or practice.

This year we are pleased to present the ECPN Early Career Award to Dr. Emily Rothman. Dr. Rothman earned her Master’s and her ScD in Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2004. She then joined the faculty of the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health, where she was recently promoted to Associate Professor. She has also maintained a Visiting Scientist position at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center since 2004. To date, Dr. Rothman has been the PI of 2 federal, 2 state, and 3 foundation research grants. As of May 2011, her CV included 28 peer-reviewed publications, 3 book chapters or curricula, 1 policy report, and 5 popular-press publications. She has been invited to speak on the topic of intimate partner or dating violence at state, national, and international conferences, taught several courses for graduate students, and has been recognized for her commitment to high-quality teaching. She has served on multiple Massachusetts state boards or coalitions. She is described as “the quintessential prevention scientist because she has such a solid grounding in what resonates with practitioners, what kinds of innovations are truly necessary in the field, and how she can play a unique and key role in transforming practice by being an excellent scientist.” Clearly, Emily is quickly gaining recognition as a leader within the field of prevention research. It is our pleasure to count Dr. Emily Rothman among the recipients of ECPN Early Career Awardees.

The Friend of ECPN Award is presented to a mid-career or senior preventionist who has supported and encouraged early career prevention scientists or issues.

This year we are honored to present the Friend of ECPN Award to Dr. Daniel Shaw, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, with joint appointments in the School of Medicine and Center for Social and Urban Research. Dr. Shaw is the Director of the Pitt Parents and Children Laboratory. Dr. Shaw’s commitment to supporting the next generation of scientists is evident from his own and his students’ records. Over the years, his advisees have been awarded 44 competitive fellowships and/or publication awards, and have co-authored 50 peer reviewed publications under his direction, with another 35 peer-reviewed papers co-authored by post-doctoral fellows. Dr. Shaw encourages his mentees to think translationally about their research. He equally prioritizes both basic and applied prevention research topics, and he strives to pass on that balance to his mentees. Even though he is involved in many projects, he makes himself very available to his mentees and gives them generous amounts of his time. He challenges his mentees to excel, pushes them to do their best work, and continues to be a source of support and mentorship after they leave his laboratory to launch their independent careers. In the words from his nominator, “He has the patience, wisdom and experience to meet students where they are in their career and has high but reasonable expectations for their work.” We are honored to present this award to Dr. Shaw for his continued support mentoring the next generation of prevention scientists.