Samantha Brown is an assistant professor at the Colorado State University School of Social Work. Dr. Brown’s research interests include the identification of risk and protective pathways that shape the health and development of children and families exposed to early adversity as well as the development and testing of prevention and intervention programs to better serve children and families with complex needs.
Although exposure to early adversity is a significant public health problem, Dr. Brown is passionate about prevention science because she believes that the harmful health and developmental consequences of early life stress can be prevented by providing key supports and resources to families.
Dr. Brown enjoys working with a strong interdisciplinary team of scholars in the Prevention Research Center to engage in efforts to improve the social good.
Bradley T. Conner, associate professor in the CSU Department of Psychology, conducts thematic research that focuses on the etiology and negative outcomes of sensation seeking, emotion dysregulation and impulsivity across the lifespan. More specifically, he studies how certain genotypes and personality types influence the onset and course of disorders and the engagement in risky behaviors, such as drug misuse, risky sexual behavior, and delinquency in adolescence and young adulthood.
He employs advanced multivariate statistical techniques to further understanding of the complex relations among genes, personality types, psychopathology, and risky behavior as causal mechanisms of negative outcomes such as substance dependence, contraction of sexually transmitted infections, injury, incarceration, and death. Ultimately, the goal of his research is to further understanding of how prevention and intervention efficacy vary as a function of the interplay of genetic, personality, and environmental factors. Related to his research, Dr. Conner also serves as the Director for the Master’s in Addictions Counseling program.
Dr. Conner currently collaborates with Prevention Research Center colleagues as part of the Cannabis Research Group. He works on projects aiming to prevent the negative consequences associated with cannabis misuse and cannabis use disorder. Dr. Conner values the work conducted in the Prevention Research Center and the support he gets from the ongoing collaboration.
Dan Graham is an associate professor at the Colorado State University Department of Psychology. Dr. Graham’s work takes a social-ecological approach to promoting healthy eating and physical activity (i.e., aiming to use policy, environmental change, social relationships, and psychological variables to improve health behaviors.)
He currently collaborates with Prevention Research Center colleagues on projects aiming to promote school health, and it has been a great pleasure working with this group for the past several years. The diverse perspectives represented by this group have greatly enriched his work, and he looks forward to continuing this partnership.
James Graham is a professor at the Colorado State University Department of Occupational Therapy and director of the Center for Community Partnerships. The Center provides supported education and supported employment services for transition-age youth and adults with disabilities. His research program focuses on the hierarchy of health determinants and how factors from different levels (e.g., person-level, provider-level, and community- or system-level) influence the long-term health and independence of adults with disabilities and/or chronic health conditions.
Dr. Graham enjoys working with Prevention Research Center investigators and community partners to identify practical solutions to complex, real-world issues.
Kimberly Henry is a professor at the Colorado State University Department of Psychology and holds an appointment at the Colorado School of Public Health. As a behavioral scientist oriented toward prevention, her work focuses on the psychological and social factors that produce or mitigate the health risking behaviors of adolescents and young adults.
Her goals are to develop and test theoretical models in order to understand the complex interactions of risk, promotive, and protective factors that influence these risk behaviors and, ultimately, to create and test methods for prevention. Her work is funded by the National Institute on Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Shannon Hughes is an assistant professor at the Colorado State University School of Social Work. Her research program seeks to improve best practices around how psychotropic medications are prescribed, assessed, and monitored in mental health and child welfare systems.
In her research lab, the Alternatives for Mental Health and Healing Lab, aims to advance holistic, person-centered, and cutting-edge alternatives founded in the synthesis of research evidence, innovative thinking, and community partnership. Her research ultimately helps build the evidence base for meaningful practice alternatives and forges new pathways for achieving individual and community mental/emotional health and well-being.
Tiffany M. Jones is an assistant professor at the Colorado State University School of Social Work. Dr. Jones investigates the role of racial difference in the etiology of behavioral health and prevention program development and implementation. She is currently working with schools in the Seattle region to develop data driven strategies to reduce racial disparities in school outcomes and improve school climate and social emotional learning. The principles of prevention science are at the core of Dr. Jones’s work, she brings a racial equity lens to how prevention science can be leveraged to interrupt the school-to-prison pipeline and promote behavioral health in young people.
Rachel Lucas-Thompson is an associate professor at the Colorado State University Department of Human Development and Family Studies. She is studying prevention and intervention strategies to reduce the risk of health problems for teens, especially those from high-conflict homes.
Dr. Lucas-Thompson leads a collaborative team to explore mindfulness-based interventions to support adolescents from high-conflict homes, and to develop the first multi-modal adaptive technological supplement for an in-person mindfulness intervention. Working with the Prevention Research Center is an excellent opportunity to collaborate on cutting-edge, collaborative, and rigorous science and science-based practice.
Gloria Luong is an assistant professor at the Colorado State University Department of Human Development and Family Studies and the director of the Health, Emotion, and Aging Research Team. Her research program examines pathways to healthy and successful aging, particularly with respect to how people learn to cope with stressful experiences and utilize resources to reduce the negative health outcomes associated with stressors.
She is currently collaborating with Dr. Doug Coatsworth on a project called the Compassionate Community Actively Living Mindfulness to better understand how mindfulness programs and practices may help facilitate the move into senior housing for older adults and their social partners.
Prevention science research projects like these focus on leveraging findings in the scientific literature to address important societal problems, including those that affect aging communities.
Tracy Nelson is the director of the Colorado School of Public Health at Colorado State University. Dr. Nelson’s research questions have shifted over the last five years from a focus on cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology to questions driven by the community. She is excited about engaged scholarship and its potential for short and long term impacts.
Her recent work has included developing numerous opportunities with external partners, primarily focused on program development, data management and evaluation; such partners include the Healthy Hearts program with UCHealth, the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) or Green Berets as well as numerous Special Operation Wings of the Air Force Special Operations Command.
Her collaboration with the Prevention Research Center will enhance these projects through faculty expertise, their focus on translating research to practice and their connections to the community. The center will also have an impact on our work within the Colorado School of Public Health.
Mark A. Prince is an assistant professor at the Colorado State University Department of Psychology and the associate director of Addiction Counseling. His research focuses on identifying mechanisms of behavior change in addiction and on developing interventions targeting these mechanisms. Dr. Prince’s intervention efforts have focused on brief individually-tailored interventions that can be disseminated on a large scale. The overall goal of his work is to develop effective treatment approaches for those individuals seeking help for substance use problems. To achieve this goal, he believes that it is critical to understand patterns in the clinical course of substance use disorders, as well as the ways in which people are successful in achieving change.
Beyond his intervention research, he has a strong commitment to prevention. Dr. Prince enjoys collaborating with faculty who share this commitment at the Prevention Research Center by working together on projects including improving large scale technology delivered personalized normative feedback for cannabis using college students, improving screening and assessment tools, and extending early intervention efforts, developed in college student samples, to address substance use issues among high-risk youth.
Arlene A. Schmid is an associate professor in the Colorado State University Department of Occupational Therapy. Prevention of future disease and disability is a hallmark of occupational therapy. Dr. Schmid’s research has included multiple studies regarding fall prevention, particularly in populations at high risk for falls, like stroke, brain injury, or Parkinson’s Disease.
Currently, Dr. Schmid and her team are funded to develop and test interventions that merge yoga and occupational therapy or education to help manage both diabetes and chronic pain. Improved management of issues like diabetes and pain helps to prevent future falls and disability common to chronic disease.
Lauren Shomakeris an associate professor at the Colorado State University Department of Human Development and Family Studies. Her prevention science research focus is on obesity and diabetes. Dr. Shomaker develops and tests the efficacy and effectiveness of programs for adolescents to reduce their chances of developing adult obesity and obesity-related chronic diseases.
She collaborates with the Prevention Research Center on evaluating mindfulness-based interventions for adolescents at-risk for excess weight gain. Dr. Shomaker is grateful for a Prevention Research Center interdisciplinary pilot grant that supports a study exploring pragmatic healthcare approaches to prevention of excess gestational weight gain in pregnant teens.
Jamie Yoder is an associate professor at the Colorado State University School of Social Work. As a translational social work academic, Dr. Yoder’s scholarly work is centered on testing social determinants of youth violence to inform the study of youth violence prevention programs.
Her current prevention research activities include several projects, one of which is the study of a school-based youth violence prevention program, Sources of Strength to determine mechanisms of change, degree of implementation in rural districts, and long-term reductions in youth violence.
The network of professional colleagues available through the Prevention Research Center creates opportunity for interdisciplinary collaborations, shared ideas, and impactful contributions to science using upstream approaches to improved health outcomes across the life course.
Paula Yuma is an assistant professor in the Colorado State University School of Social Work. Dr. Yuma studies the effects of environmental, economic, and social characteristics of neighborhoods on the health and well-being of individuals, with an overall goal of eliminating health disparities.
Dr. Yuma has recently led funded research projects on equitable outdoor engagement for youth, supporting health and social service providers with coping and resiliency after disasters, relationships between behavioral health and child maltreatment, and disparities in traumatic injury prevention and care in rural communities. She has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Health Education & Behavior, Pediatrics, and The Journal of Trauma and Critical Care Surgery. Dr. Yuma teaches Research Methods and Behavioral/Developmental Theory in the School of Social Work.