Every day...
... the Child and Family Center is promoting the healthy development of children and families in a variety of cultural communities.
How Does CFC Promote
Child and Family Health?
- Provides low-cost intervention services for children, adolescents, and families in Eugene and Portland, Oregon, and surrounding areas, as well as in other study areas in the United States
- Engages in research on social and emotional processes among children, adolescents, and families
- Designs and evaluates mental health services
- Shares and exchanges findings through a collaborative forum of affiliate researchers around the world
- Provides professional and research training for graduate and undergraduate students, in part by interfacing with community agencies
- Offers continuing education services for mental health professionals and school staff members
- Partners with organizations and individuals to promote the dissemination of child and family research
Who Are We?
- The Child and Family Center is a research institute that was established in 2000 and formally approved as part of the Oregon University System in July 2002.
- The center’s research scientists, interventionists, and staff are located in Eugene, Oregon, and Portland, Oregon.
- Each team works on multiple grant-funded projects in these settings.
- CFC operates as a community within a community.
- The research at CFC benefits from thousands of colleagues in the international community who are engaging in research on the etiology and prevention of mental health problems in childhood and adolescence.
- Shaped by the changing nature of the science, our work integrates new scientific findings into our research and our prevention services.
- We consider the children and families we work with to be major colleagues in the collaborative process of improving and innovating mental health services for future generations.
Eugene Team
- The Eugene office houses the core of our projects’ management teams, including the business manager, science/technical editor, technology consultant, and coding and data management teams.
- The Eugene site also accommodates approximately 40 research staff, scientists, predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees, and education project assistants.
- Several grant-funded projects operate primarily out of this location, including Early Steps (Dr. Tom Dishion, principal investigator) and Oregon Parent Project (Dr. Laura Lee McIntyre, principal investigator).
- We use videoconferencing to communicate with off-site research settings such as those in Portland; Pittsburg; Charlottesville, Virginia; Oxford, UK; and Arizona State University.
The Eugene site also houses the Child and Family Center Clinic.
- Students in the UO counseling, school, and clinical psychology programs participate in this year-long practicum experience, which is designed to train students in empirically based interventions for children and families.
- Using our family-centered intervention approach, the Family Check-Up, students learn to conduct ecological assessments and give feedback to caretakers using motivational interviewing techniques.
- The clinic serves families with children ranging in age from 0 through 17, and students have opportunities to work individually with children as well as with parents/families.
- The clinic serves about 50 to 75 families per year, and students carry about 3 to 5 families in their caseloads at any given time.
- The clinic offers services in Spanish.
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Portland Team
- The Portland office, which houses approximately 10 full-time staff and part-time research assistants, is located in NE Portland near schools and community centers that have been involved in our research.
- In this office, we have conducted several major federal grant-funded projects, including Project Alliance 1 (Dr. Tom Dishion, principal investigator), Project Alliance 2 (Dr. Beth Stormshak, principal investigator), a project funded by the Centers for Disease Control (Dr. Beth Stormshak, principal investigator) that is adapting the Family Check-Up for community mental health, and school-based grants from the Department of Education.
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CFC Director
Beth Stormshak, Ph.D., is the director of the Child and Family Center. She has been a faculty member in the University of Oregon College of Education’s Counseling Psychology program since 1996. Her early research focused on understanding developmental factors associated with conduct and problem behavior, including parenting and peer relations. For the past 10 years, she has been conducting intervention and prevention research. Her work has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the Department of Education, and Centers for Disease Control. Her focus is on developing and implementing family-centered, school-based interventions to reduce future risk of substance use and antisocial behavior.
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Director's Statement
How can science affect the life of the adolescent down the street who’s been skipping school and hanging out downtown with her new friends? How can research change parenting practices such as communication and monitoring? What does fMRI and EEG readings have to do with how easily an adolescent navigates the temptations of peer pressure?
At CFC, we apply research to questions such as these, we involve ourselves with the families we serve, we rely on direct observation, we work with youth and their parents, siblings, teachers, and friends. We study their environments; we assess their thoughts and feelings; we convey skills, encouragement, and support; and we offer services that give families results more efficiently. All CFC activities are research based. A portion of our research translates to better services for children and families. Studying the effectiveness of our CFC interventions often leads to new research questions. This cyclical pattern of research benefits from the valuable contributions of our research scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, and postdoctoral fellows.
Family-centered interventions are the key to behavior change for both youth and families. The overarching goal at CFC is to conduct innovative, scientific research on efficacious interventions to prevent problem behavior for youth and families, including the prevention of substance use, delinquency, and high-risk behaviors that occur during developmental transitions. Guided by a developmental–ecological model that focuses on understanding youth in the context of families, schools, and communities, we have developed and refined a set of tools for intervening with children and families across the lifespan, from birth to early adulthood. We are committed to working with diverse populations and communities, including American Indian communities and urban, ethnically and culturally diverse neighborhoods. Our multicultural focus, family-centered approach to intervention, and science-based practice allow us to advance the field of prevention through both our clinical model and intervention research. Future research will focus on dissemination and implementation in real-world settings and training of community professionals in our model.
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CFC Associate Director
Laura Lee McIntyre, Ph.D., is the associate director of the Child and Family Center and a faculty member in the Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences in the University of Oregon College of Education. For the past 15 years, her work has focused on understanding and promoting parent and child well-being in families with children with developmental delays or disabilities. Her professional background blends the fields of school psychology, special education, and pediatric child clinical psychology and centers on early identification and treatment of childhood developmental and behavioral problems. Her work emphasizes developing parent–professional partnerships and working with a variety of caregivers who support children. She is especially interested in early intervention and prevention work with families who have young children with developmental problems who are at risk for negative social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes at home and at school. She has funding from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NIH/NICHD) to support this work. She is an associate professor and director of the School Psychology Program at the University of Oregon and a licensed psychologist, certified school psychologist, and board certified behavior analyst.
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Science Team
The behavior scientists at CFC regularly review the center’s progress toward achieving its mission through research and clinical practice. Activities include sharing resources among research projects, short- and long-range CFC planning, helping guide ongoing research activities and future research agendas, and facilitating project problem solving, with input from directors and coordinators from the Portland and Eugene studies and from the advisory board.
CFC scientists include
Allison Caruthers, Krista Chronister, Carrie Clark, Thomas Dishion, Melissa Donovick, Andy Garbacz, Atika Khurana, Laura Lee McIntyre, Kevin Moore, Kristina Hiatt Racer, Elizabeth Skowron, and Beth Stormshak.
Student Trainees Play a Vital Role at CFC
Training and education are at the hub of CFC activities. Figure 1 (right) provides an overview of the synergism between our training and education mission and the research process. This integrated effort is benefited by two postdoctoral training grants, one from the Institute of Educational Science and the other from the National Institute of Mental Health. In addition, the Child and Family practicum currently includes several doctoral students who are providing services to children and families. Faculty are researchers who teach graduate and undergraduate courses at the University of Oregon.
We are also strongly committed to undergraduate training. Each year, more than 25 undergraduate education project assistants are working in various segments of our research program, including direct observation, Brain and Behavior Lab, intervention services, and ongoing research projects.
Training and education at CFC are motivating future generations of researchers and clinicians to contribute to the research process and develop greater understanding that will benefit children and families. The iterative nature of our research shows that we engage in various types of research that are mutually informative.
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Our Model for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Training
- combines developmental and child/adolescent psychopathology research
- emphasizes connections between traditionally separate areas of psychology (e.g., cognitive neuroscience, social–personality, developmental, clinical)
- bridges programs of research that address questions across multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual behavior and dyadic interactions, cognition, emotion, perception, psychophysiology, brain activity)
- integrates advanced training in developmental research and clinical training that includes outcome evaluation and delivery of empirically validated intervention services for children and families
The current training program, Development, Emotion, Ecology, and Psychopathology (DEEP; Dr. Beth Stormshak, principal investigator), is a synergistic collaboration between CFC and the University of Oregon Department of Psychology, Oregon Social Learning Center, and Oregon Research Institute that supports trainees as they develop interdisciplinary and integrative programs of research. DEEP has three major components:
- Hands-on, individualized training through mentorship and collaboration
- Working group meetings and workshops
- Undergraduate training
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Postdoctoral Trainees
Two postdoctoral trainees are selected every other year to participate in the training program. Generally, one postdoctoral trainee focuses on advancing a program of research on abnormal or normal development that links intervention science with etiological research. The second trainee is generally selected from a nonclinical area such as attention processes in the development of antisocial behavior in young children. The postdoctoral trainee for 2011–2013 is Dr. Justin (J.D.) Smith, and the postdoctoral trainee for 2012–2014 is Dr. Agrero Zerr.
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Predoctoral Trainees
Three trainees selected every two years undertake advanced research projects in areas relevant to developmental and child clinical psychology. Predoctoral trainees for 2011–2013 are Kimbree Brown, Mallory Brown, Naomi Knoble, Kenya Makhiawala, and Christina Gamache Martin.
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Organization Overview of CFC
The mission, organizational procedures, and details of ongoing projects and staff are described in the CFC Organizational Manual. Yearly advisory meetings are held to provide a forum for University of Oregon faculty and the UO vice president of research to review CFC’s annual activity and to discuss strategies to promote the role of CFC within the university and state community.
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CFC Support Staff
Lauren Townsend, Business Manager
Lauren joined the CFC in July 2012 and is in charge of the center’s fiscal and administrative operations. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Georgia in 2006. Her experience includes office, budget, and operations management in both the public and the private sectors. Lauren likes to spend her free time cooking, cycling, and working on various house projects. Now convinced that there is nothing better than an Oregon summer day, she likes to spend them relaxing on her back deck with her fiancé, Taylor, and dog, Delia.
Cheryl Mikkola, Science & Technical Editor
Cher has been with CFC since November 2005 and has been an author and editor for more than 25 years. She has worked with pharmaceutical and separation scientists, global positioning engineers, and research psychologists. In her freelance editing business, she has worked with material as disparate as crime thrillers, contemporary Taoism, pregnancy and birth, eldercare and hospice, Tarot, and health and education research, and she is the copy editor at the International Journal of Yoga Therapy. She has a grown son and daughter and currently lives with her kitty in her mountain cottage.
Richard Nelson, IT Consultant
Richard is in command of all things electronic and computer at CFC. After spending time doing IT in academia, Richard joined the private sector at a Eugene print shop doing everything from telecom to computers to programming, all while completing his degree at the University of Oregon. Richard joined CFC in July 2005, bringing with him his rather eccentric and “homebrewed” approach to IT. Richard spends his time outside of work tooling on his race car, working on his house, and making custom circuit boards … when his wife lets him.
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News Releases
Contact Us
How to Find Us
Mailing Address
Child and Family Center
6217 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-6217
Phone: 541-346-4805
Fax: 541-346-4858
Physical Address
1600 Millrace Dr.
Suite 106
Eugene, OR 97403-1995
Office Hours: 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday, or by appointment
Driving Directions
From the North:
I-5 South to Exit 191 (Glenwood)
Turn right onto Glenwood Blvd.
Turn right to stay on Glenwood Blvd.
Turn left onto Franklin Blvd.
Turn right onto Riverfront Pkwy.
Turn right onto Millrace Dr.
CFC is situated on the southeast corner of the intersection.
Enter building from the north entrance and goto Suite 106
From the South:
I-5 North to Exit 191 (Glenwood)
Turn right onto Glenwood Blvd.
Turn left onto Franklin Blvd.
Turn right onto Riverfront Pkwy.
Turn right onto Millrace Dr.
CFC is situated on the southeast corner of the intersection.
Enter building from the north entrance and goto Suite 106
From the East:
OR-126 (McKenzie Hwy / Main St.)
OR-126 becomes Main St.
Main St. becomes Franklin Blvd.
Turn right onto Riverfront Pkwy.
Turn right onto Millrace Dr.
CFC is situated on the southeast corner of the intersection.
Enter building from the north entrance and goto Suite 106
From the West:
OR-126 (Florence–Eugene Hwy)
OR-126 becomes W. 11th Ave.
Turn left onto Garfield St.
Turn right onto W. 7th Ave.
W. 7th Ave. becomes Franklin Blvd.
Turn left onto Riverfront Pkwy.
Turn right onto Millrace Dr.
CFC is situated on the southeast corner of the intersection.
Enter building from the north entrance and goto Suite 106
70 NW Couch St. Suite 242
Portland, OR 97209
Phone: 503-412-36783
Fax: 503-412-3776
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