This application is to request funding to support the development and implementation of the annual scientific meetings of the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) for the next five years. The SPR was founded in 1991 by a small group of NIDA-supported senior investigators. Over the past nine years, the membership has expanded to well over four hundred researchers, advocates, and trainees representing broad areas of public health prevention research. The research presented at the annual meeting is funded by increasingly diverse NIH institutes, such as NIMH, NIDA, NIAAA, and NCI, and other federal agencies such as SAMHSA, OJJDP, the DOE, and various private foundations. The broadening of focus of SPR was recognized in 1998 and 1999 with an increase in the size and representation of the Board of Directors, and the passage by the membership of a new set of bylaws that codifies the broad expanding mission. Central to the more inclusive mission is establishing and disseminating principles for assessing the quality of evidence of prevention programs across public health domains. SPR supports institutionalizing prevention programs with demonstrated effectiveness.
The aims of this application are: 1) To develop through the SPR annual meetings a centrally integrative scientific forum for the exchange of new concepts, methods, and results from prevention research and related public health fields. 2) To provide opportunities for training and career building among investigators at all stages of their research careers in the areas needed for the design and implementation of rigorous, reliable, and valid prevention research. Central to this aim is the developing of programs for recruiting promising minority students and faculty into public health prevention research. 3) To foster communication between scientists and public policy leaders concerning the implementation of evidence-based prevention programs in all areas of public health. Through activities at the annual meetings, the SPR will create unique opportunities for informing scientists about prevention priorities, and how these concerns can be addressed in scientific studies. Support of the annual meetings over the next five years will enable strategic planning beyond the current ad hoc annual short-term planning currently required by uncertain funding. Until now, resources for the annual meetings have been gained on a year-to-year basis with no long-term sustained planning possible. As SPR has grown, revenues from membership dues, workshop fees, and subscriptions for SPR's journal Prevention Science have increased. However, due to the rapid growth in size and costs of the annual meeting, current revenues are insufficient to cover the costs of the annual meeting. Increasing dues and fees would not only decrease the participation of early career researchers, but it also would impair the ability of SPR to bring to the meeting leading scientists who are outside the mainstream of prevention research, but whose perspectives and research findings.
