Support is requested for the collaborative work of the Research Consortium on Family Risk and Resilience. The Consortium is composed of eleven senior scientists, each of whom has an active, funded program of longitudinal family research on biological, psychological, social, or social-structural factors involved in the developmental course of mental health or illness. The Consortium has been organized, specifically, to promote intellectual exchange and collaborative research on: 1) Family and individual risk, resilience, protective mechanisms, and vulnerabilities to stress that are conceptualized in terms of the interplay among life-course developmental processes at multiple levels of analysis; 2) A family approach to the study of risk and resilience processes which can facilitate examination of multiple levels of influence; 3) Comparative studies of risk and resilience; 4) New advances in research and statistical methodology that need to be incorporated into family risk and resiliency research; and 5) The extension of basic studies of risk and resilience processes by experimental tests using prevention and intervention studies. The Consortium plans four coordinate programs to address the aims outlined above: 1) regular meetings and communication to do the scientific business of the Consortium including planning collaborations among Consortium members; 2) a multisite, postdoctoral training program in family risk and resilience research (to be funded through a separate training grant); 3) an annual Summer Institute, open to the family research field, centering on advances in family risk and resilience research (new findings, methodologies, and analyses) and offering a forum for intellectual exchange and the formation of collaborations; and 4) regular communications with other researchers and organizations. Products of the Consortium will include: 1) review papers and technical reports from its regular meetings; 2) collaborative research projects; 3) improved research on family risk and resilience resulting from the participation of many family researchers in the Summer Institutes; 4) a group of well- trained postdoctoral fellows; and 5) an annually published volume based on the Summer Institute.
