2016-2017 Speaker Series

“Families Under Stress: Implications for Intervention”

Please join us for this cutting-edge panel discussion focusing on couple stress (including parents), led by two of the leading experts in the field. Particular attention will be given to how best to conceptualize stress in couples, new approaches in intervention and prevention, and future directions for the field. This is a roundtable, participatory discussion, so come with questions and contribute to this event.

Co-Sponsored with the Social Science Research Institute and the Children, Youth & Families Consortium

“Scaling up Evidence-Based Programs in Community Settings: Opportunities and Challenges”

Abstract: A plethora of empirically supported preventive interventions have been shown to avert and improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. Yet, evidence-based programs and practices (EBPs) often do not lead to large-scale and successful program implementation in real world settings. Advancing the impact of effective prevention programs requires addressing fundamental questions about novel ways that communities can adopt, adapt to their own cultural values, and subsequently own and deliver an EBP intervention with fidelity and sustainability. This presentation will address challenges and opportunities for scaling up EBP in community settings, demonstrating the potential widespread implementation and sustainability of technology as an effective program delivery platform.

Penn State’s Fifth Annual Conference on Child Protection and Well-Being

“Trauma Informed Schools: How child maltreatment prevention, detection, and intervention can be integrated into the school-setting”

Co-Sponsored by the Child Study Center

“Resilience to Adversity and the Early Origins of Disease”

Abstract: This presentation will describe recent research which tested hypotheses about the early origins of disease among rural African American youth. These children and adolescents are at elevated risk for health problems across the lifespan. A basic premise of the health disparities literature that has yet to be examined empirically proposes that exposure to chronic stressors, many of which are psychosocial, will weather young people’s bodies, resulting in premature aging of cells and tissues throughout the body and a shorter life expectancy. This presentation will address this hypothesis and focus on the ways in which family support and participation in prevention programming can offset health risks that contribute to the early origin of disease.

Co-Sponsored with the Prevention Research Center

Dr. Brody is also presenting the BENNETT LECTURE
Thursday, October 20, 2016

Penn State’s 24th Annual National Symposium on Family Issues

“Sleep across the Life Course: Family Influences & Impacts”

Co-Sponsored with the Social Science Research Institute

“It really does take a village: The role of neighborhood in the etiology of child antisocial behavior”

Abstract: There is now considerable evidence that neighborhood disadvantage predicts child antisocial behavior, and that this effect may be causal, at least to an extent.  However, the mechanisms underlying these contextual influences on child behavior remain unclear.  In this talk, I will examine gene-environment interplay as one key possibility, evaluating how structural characteristics of the neighborhood shape the etiology of child antisocial behavior.  The studies to be presented employed a number of state-of-the-science sampling, methodologic, and analytic techniques.  They were also designed to build upon one another, thereby allowing us to more fully explore the possibility of gene-environment interplay.  Results collectively provide compelling, if rather surprising, evidence regarding both ‘bioecological gene-environment interactions’ and passive gene-environment correlations.  Implications will be discussed.

“Self-Regulation in Childhood: Conceptualization and Correlates”

Abstract: Recently there has been an increasing appreciation of self-regulation in children’s socioemotional functioning in both typical and atypical samples. Dr. Eisenberg will discuss different conceptualizations of top-down self-regulation and differentiate between effortful control and reactive control (aspects of control that are less voluntary), and she will explain how these constructs are typically operationalized. She will also discuss hypothesized and empirical relations of self-regulation and reactive (bottom-up) control to adjustment and maladjustment, emphasizing temperamentally based effortful control, bidirectional relations, and mediators and moderators of these relations.

Co-Sponsored with the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center

Dr. Eisenberg is also presenting the 2017 LECTURE ON COMPASSION
Thursday, April 20, 2017
4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m., 22 Biobehavioral Health Building/Pike Auditorium