The PROSPER Project, a collaboration between faculty members in the College of Health and Human Development and the College of Agricultural Sciences, along with local community Extension Educators, received the 2013 Penn State Award for Community Engagement earlier this year. The Penn State Outreach and Online Education award annually recognizes projects that exemplify the University’s mission of being an “engaged institution.”
PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) delivers evidence-based programs that have been shown, through systematic study, to strengthen families, reduce risky behaviors and enhance positive development in youth. The program achieves these outcomes by coordinating prevention scientists, public school system personnel, and Cooperative Extension Educators in rural Pennsylvania and Iowa communities. Local community PROSPER teams, led by an Extension Educator, include school personnel, representatives from local community groups, and youth and parents, and are supported by prevention scientists. The teams work to build sustainable interventions that have yielded numerous public health benefits, including lower rates of youth delinquency and substance use and more engaged and supportive parent-adolescent relationships.
Researchers initially studied sixth grade students, but have now followed these students through high school graduation and into young adulthood to assess the long term effects of participating in the PROSPER prevention programming. PROSPER teams saw immediate, measurable benefits within the 14 participating communities compared to youth and families in 14 similar communities where the PROSPER program was not provided. Young people in the PROSPER communities were 40 percent less likely to have participated in aggressive and destructive behaviors by tenth grade. There was also a 40 percent drop in substance use by tenth grade.
With partners both inside and outside the University, PROSPER showcases the power of interdisciplinary and inter-professional collaboration. It serves as a model of university-community collaboration that benefits youth, their families, and their communities through implementation of sustainable, evidence-based prevention programs.
The Children, Youth, and Families Consortium (CYFC) supported PROSPER through seed funding 12 years ago when the program was in its early stages and through matching funds to support the program’s implementation. Since then, PROSPER has grown extensively, and continues to grow.
“There’s always a risk, and the CYFC’s ability to take that risk allowed us to submit a bold and well-grounded proposal for funding,” Daniel Perkins, Professor of Family and Youth Resiliency and Policy, said. “In this case the seed has yielded abundant fruit in the form of positive outcomes for youth, their families and their communities.”
Future plans include implementing the program nationally, as well as targeted efforts at promoting youth resilience on Native American reservations and in U.S. military families.