This application seeks support for renewal of the existing NIMH-funded Hopkins Prevention Research Center (HPRC) at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. The HPRC supports prevention research and preventive trials aimed at the reduction of major public mental health problems. The overall goals of the HPRC are 1) To develop the theoretical framework, methods, and research structure necessary to undertake and test epidemiologically-designed preventive trials aimed at risk factors in children and families shown to be predictive of later depressive symptoms and disorders, antisocial behavior and disorders, heavy substance use, and other psychiatric problems; 2) To broaden and extend collaborations among prevention researchers and to facilitate exchanges of concepts, methods, results, and data useful to prevention research; and 3) To develop opportunities for interdisciplinary prevention research training, with particular emphasis on exchanges across prevention research and other relevant research laboratories; and 4) To extend the Center's search for modifiable conditions and processes that occur in childhood to include conditions and processes that influence the subsequent occurrence of psychiatric disorders among young adults. The HPRC involves investigators from the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Arizona State University and the University of South Florida. Activities are organized within four research systems each of which is coordinated by a senior investigator: assessment, quantitative, field trials dissemination. This proposal describes an HPRC that has been substantially reorganized in response to changes in the priorities for NIMH-funded prevention research centers and in response to the evolution of its focus from a program of interventions with first graders to its current emphasis on the implementation of a broader program of prevention research involved in the design, testing and dissemination of an array of conceptually-related, community based preventive interventions. The HPRC, however, remains committed to research that both tests developmental theory and examines the efficacy and effectiveness of preventive interventions. We also remain committed to refining our understanding of risk and protective factors within ecologically and epidemiologically valid designs. Through reorganization and expansion of the Center's faculty, we will be able to translate our understanding of risk and protective factors into a continuum of interventions responsive to the structures and resources of the major social institutions affecting the mental health of children, adolescents and their families.
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