The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America

Our Moment: The Next Generation of Prevention | PCA America's Leadership

• Prevent Child Abuse America

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In this powerful episode of The Shift: Voices of Prevention, Prevent Child Abuse America’s leadership team—Dr. Melissa Merrick (President & CEO), Dr. Bart Klika (Chief Research Officer), and Jennifer Jones (Chief Strategy Officer)—come together to reflect on a pivotal moment for the prevention movement.

With candor and urgency, they explore what it means to lead at the intersection of equity, innovation, and community wisdom. From reimagining systems to centering lived experience, this conversation offers a compelling look at the future we’re building—one rooted in connection, courage, and collective action.

This is more than strategy—it’s a call to rise to the moment, together.

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SPEAKER_02:

This is The Shift Voices of Prevention, a podcast from Prevent Child Abuse America where we explore bold ideas, cultural change, and what it truly means to support children and families. Join us to change the narrative one conversation at a time. Today's show was brought to you by PCA America's 2025 National Conference. Hosted in Portland, Oregon, August 12th through August 14th, the transformative three-day conference features three keynote speakers and more than 70 workshops that dive into the key drivers of change. From innovative programs and practices to family-focused policies, cutting-edge research, and public awareness and engagement strategies, the conference is designed to push the field toward upstream prevention and creating a future where every child and family can thrive. To be in the room when change happens, visit preventchildabuse.org. Hello and welcome to the Shift Voices of Prevention. I'm your host, Nathan Fink, and I'm excited to be joined by members of the PCA America Senior Leadership Team, President and CEO, Dr. Melissa Merrick, Chief Research Officer, Dr. Bart Klicka, and Chief Strategy Officer Jennifer Jones, MSW. It is so good to see you all.

SPEAKER_00:

Great to be here with you, Nate.

SPEAKER_02:

Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Always great to see you. We're so excited. Also very excited to have you with us in uh in Portland uh in less than a month.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm excited to see you all too. Every time I do, we have a lot to talk about, including that 2025 PCA America National Conference, August 12th through August 14th in Portland, Oregon. But before we get there, I want to better understand what it means to host a conference focused on primary prevention, the programs and practices, cutting edge research in this particular environment, a time when the field is experiencing, for all intents and purposes, a historic divestment in evidence-based strategies that prevent child abuse and neglect. Now, this is a question for all of you, but perhaps let's start with Melissa. Talk to us a bit about what the field is experiencing at this point in time.

SPEAKER_03:

Goodness, it's a big question, Nate. And thanks. It's always great to chat with you. You know, I think a lot about parenting in this moment. And uh this is an unprecedented time for parents. So when I really think about families and what families are experiencing right now, it is just a really, really stressful time. And you mentioned many of the reasons. You know, many of our social safety net programs are being threatened or cut or eliminated, frankly. And so in a time where stress is super high and this investment in prevention is being uh threatened, that means the conditions are ripe for things not going great for families, right? And so we know through decades of research that we need to meet families where they are. We need to help them navigate the challenges of parenting. And in a time like this, where again, the real and perceived threats just add to the overload on families, I will just say the field must respond in kind, right? We must come together with our hearts, our minds, our creativity, our innovation, our partnerships to really figure out how we're gonna meet this moment. It's kind of similar to, you know, an unprecedented global health pandemic, COVID-19, where we were all uh just a few short years ago, right? And it's sort of like, gosh, parenting is always hard, but in a time of just acute stress and trauma and not having access to high-quality childcare or any childcare, frankly, right? We knew that risks were high, but we were able to meet that moment together with creativity, with partnership, with a lot of humility, right? Listening to what people need, helping them get their needs met in their own communities before they were really in acute crisis. This is the challenge of this time, too. And I think, you know, we are lucky and proud at the National Office of Prevent Child Abuse America to do our work in partnership with Boots on the Ground, with our state chapters, with our Healthy Families America affiliates, with multiple partners across sector, right? Who can be creative, who can be steadfast, who can really stay the course in this time. Yes, we have unprecedented threats to our funding, to our bottom line, where many of us are gonna have to shift the way that we staff, the way that we provide support, but the commitment and the values, the core values of our work are the same. That all parents are trying to do the very best they can and trying to navigate untenable conditions that really can never be up to them alone to solve. Things like historical trauma and generational trauma and you know, all the isms and all of the kind of oppressive systems. Not any of us, no matter how hard we try, we cannot do that alone. We need one another. And so I think that the field, I mean, together, like at a conference like ours, but together in our round tables, in our conversations, in our partnerships, we're trying to meet this moment. We're trying to figure out what is it that we need to do more of uh for impact for families and what are the things that frankly might be a nice to have, but not a must-have in this time, right? And and I think everybody is trying to do that and with some real tangible issues, right? Like funding's cut, what are we gonna do? We don't, you know, we have to support our time and talent and and and our workforce, right? We have to support our workforce too. These threats like of deportation and immigration and being detained that we know families are experiencing, it's not just families that we partner to serve. It's our own families. It's our own home visiting workforce, it's our own chapter uh network, right? We live in the same communities as the families that we um partner with to support. So it's just a time for a lot of humility, but a lot of agency, a lot of commitment to we may have to not just do things better, we may have to do better things in this time, right? And and and how we all together are needed uh to really create the future that we want. We want communities that are supported with love and uh care, and we want to maximize possibility. That is just more important than ever. So I think we're changing in many ways, but kind of our core uh functions, our core focus, our core commitment to making sure that all children and families live a happy and purposeful life with hope for the future. That is the work. That's the work that we all do in partnership.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think um a couple of things, Nate. It's uh initially we were concerned with the turnout for our national conference uh in Portland in August, given some of the deep cuts that we know that states and organizations are going to be facing with the federal government's budget priorities. But as of today, we are close to uh a thousand people registered. Um, we're still about a month out from the conference. Our registration numbers are trending higher than Baltimore and Milwaukee's conferences. And we really believe that people want to be together. They want to be with their peers, they want to be able to network and learn, and they want the camaraderie, if you will, um, right, during these challenging times. And so I think we are gonna have uh uh an amazing opportunity to be together in person and to really learn and grow. And as Melissa said, do uh do things differently. Talk about hard and challenging things, but also talk about solutions, uh, solutions that we know that are important, but also we know are much needed uh in this particular time.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, Bart, I keep thinking that none of this impact of these choices is new to us. The research tells us and the data indicators show us, whether it's the child flourishing index or adverse childhood experiences data, we know where we've been. Is there a way you can help us understand what the data tells us through specific child and family wellness indicators about the implications of such a divestment?

SPEAKER_01:

It's a great question. And uh, you know, I think the history of our organization being a child maltreatment prevention organization, I think it's very easy for us to say, well, let's just look into the indicators of, you know, for example, child welfare involvement, and we use that as a proxy to say about how big of the problem child abuse and neglect is each year. But I think to the point you were making, you we've really started to try to expand beyond just saying that's the only way that we try to understand how well families are doing right now. And so, like you said, we look at indicators of cases, but we're also starting to look into things like child flourishing. The National Survey of Children's Health has tracked over time children's flourishing, you know, because it's one thing to say, you know, maybe a child hasn't experienced uh abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, but are they actually flourishing? Because if not, that could be a problem. And so as much as we want to track these things like child maltreatment or child flourishing, we're also really interested in saying what are the things that promote child flourishing or that reduce child maltreatment. So some of the work that we're engaged in right now is looking at the data on what are the resources that families need? Uh, are those resources available to families to support their overall well-being or to reduce uh child maltreatment? So, through the leadership, a lot of the leadership uh of Jen with our data story as an organization, we're actually building out as an organization a data dashboard where we actually pull together different sources of data, both on in terms of, you know, what are the challenges families are experiencing with maltreatment and ACEs, but also things like flourishing and at the same time starting to look at what are some of the drivers of these? What policies are in place in states? Do families have access to home visiting in their state? Do they have access to treatment? Do they have access to health care, which can open up possibilities uh for other things? And you know, you were asking too, Nate, just about uh, you know, the overall state of families now. And I came across a statistic earlier this week from the Stanford Center on Early Childhood that they've really been tracking child and family well-being since early in the pandemic. They had done a fantastic job of really trying to understand how families are navigating the circumstances of the pandemic, and they're continuing to collect data on families. And I think one of the most stark things that they've been tracking are families' experiences of material hardship. And in addition to tracking material hardship, they've been able to actually also look at what material hardship does to the parents, but also to the children. And so they've been able to demonstrate this link that when families are experiencing material hardship, which right now with talks about the expense of meeting basic needs with threats to programs and services for families, families are experiencing material hardship. And when families experience material hardship, what they've shown is that actually increases family distress, like the distress of parents, and then the distress of parents has an effect on the distress, emotional distress of kids. And so this is really what we're trying to do to understand how kids and families are doing and the types of things that we need to put into place to support kids and families.

SPEAKER_02:

Now it strikes me that when we look at the data that we've collected over time, the preponderance of it is really indicating when and where families are not doing well. But what I'm hearing is there is a pivot now to start to track the indications of wellness in families in present tense. While this type of indicator is new in terms of the way we think about it, are there any indications about what works for families to thrive?

SPEAKER_01:

No, as we were talking about, there's no one thing out there that's gonna support kids and families or to create overall well-being and flourishing. It's really what Jen and Melissa and others talk about with building an ecosystem of support for families. That can mean support for things like home visiting, which, you know, we have research to show that it improves outcomes for families. Like I said earlier, it could be access to health care that's going to open up possibilities for families to get into treatment, for families to get the mental health support that they need. And one area that I've been working on for the last number of years is the area of concrete and economic supports for families. We know that when we can reduce the material hardship that families are experiencing, they do well. Now, the example that I will use from my work is around the area of child care subsidies. We've been studying the effect of child care subsidies and choices that states make about their child care subsidy programs to look at whether or not that actually reduces things like child maltreatment or intimate partner violence. And I think the very high-level finding that we have is that when you have an expansive policy, when you allow more families to qualify for these programs, you see rates in those states are actually lower. But when we make it difficult for families to access or to keep these services once they have them, that diminishes any of the good effects of these policies. And so I'm just giving that as one example of ways that we know are showing to actually improve the well-being of families.

SPEAKER_03:

I was gonna invite Jen because obviously she has authored and done a lot of thinking in this area, but this field of positive childhood experiences and how they can balance out the adversity is really powerful, right? Even in the context of many adversities, if you have strong relationships, if you have parental warmth, if you have, you know, other adults in your ecosystem. Um, you know, I always give the example from my own personal experience, like just having someone's phone number that if I'm running late to pick up my kids from childcare, I could call someone, like a lifeline that has been shown to keep kids safe and family strong too, right? And so it's it's both at the big P policy level, like Bart has shared a lot of our uh research and data on policy level interventions that help families withstand and thrive despite a lot of challenges and stressors, but it can also be in individual neighborhoods, cooking a meal for a new parent and being a lifeline uh to friends and family is really powerful. And I think it gives us hope in this time where some of our big P policies, yes, are at risk. And yes, it will remain our job and through our networks and partners to advocate for those good things for families, but there's stuff in our individual relationships and in all of those small moments that really can make a powerful difference uh for families as well.

SPEAKER_00:

I I want to just take us back a minute to the data dashboard because we are incredibly excited. I'm incredibly excited about that. And Bart and his team, uh, the research team has been uh leading a lot of sort of the building, if you will, of the data dashboard. But it's all really based on our aspirational outcomes, um, loving and secure families, access to informal and formal supports, physical health and mental health and well-being, and economic mobility and financial stability. Those are the aspirational outcomes that make up our blueprint for family well-being or our theory of change. And so when Bart is talking about there are indicators on there, like our children flourishing. There are also indicators on there around access to food and housing and living wage employment. So we organize the data dashboard according to the North Star and according to our aspirational outcomes. And so you're gonna see both, you know, our kids experiencing fewer adverse childhood experiences, but are they also flourishing? And that to us is really important. I think the other thing that's really important about the data dashboard in particular is that we know that there are, as Bart said, ecosystem conditions that also impact and affect the well-being of kids and families. And so we're not only gonna just look at the individual level outcomes, we're also gonna look at the ecosystem condition outcomes and how those are also impacting uh kids and families, because we know that's that's a big piece. But all of this together, I think the exciting thing about this, all of this together makes up the data, our data story. What are we trying to tell, right? What's the story we need to tell to determine whether or not we're achieving our aspirational outcomes in our North Star? And so we're building out a micro site. It's gonna hopefully go live this fall. Um, and all of those pieces that we just talked about will be part of that. Additionally, each state will have a state profile so they can gather uh and they can look at their data and how their state is sort of experiencing family well-being, if you will. And we're gonna, Bart and his team are really gonna talk about like this is what the data means, right? So it's this whole idea, um, and you uh uh Nate know this well, the whole idea that it's a compilation, right, of these particular impacts and outcomes that are important. And that's the story that we're trying to tell. Real quickly, uh, just to get back to Melissa's comments about PCEs, we used it for the data dashboard, we used existing data sources at the population level that currently exist in this country. There are no population level data sources around positive childhood experiences, which we know are absolutely critical and important, um, if not more so, right, to later uh adult uh mental and physical health and well-being. And so there may be a time where we're gonna have to create these data sources so that we can tell the story, uh, that the true story that that exists in this country about the health and well-being of kids and families. And so we're super excited uh to launch that uh the microsite, hopefully again later this fall. And uh, and obviously work will need to happen on it as we go, but there's some some great stuff there and excited to share it with the field.

SPEAKER_02:

That's excellent. Thank you for bringing that up. Now, this work that is supporting families, that is preventing child abuse and neglect, it has always needed us and perhaps never needed us more. So I have three questions for you. Why should we be hopeful? Where should we be intentional, and how can we be impactful?

SPEAKER_00:

I really think and believe that this is our moment. And I believe that despite all of the challenge and uh the chaos and the uncertainty, that we have the opportunity to do things differently. And we have the opportunity to advance our collective efforts to build a primary prevention ecosystem in communities across the country. I think that is the path forward. And so, really, this leveraging the moment and creating the extraordinary opportunities that we have and we know based on the research and the feedback that we gathered as part of our blueprint for family well-being, that this is an extraordinary moment, an opportunity that we have to create with families and communities an ecosystem from the ground up that's focused on creating the conditions for all children, families, and communities to thrive. And as Melissa mentioned, our North Star would ensure that all kids and families are living a purposeful and happy life with hope for the future. So, and we know that often in times of chaos and change and uncertainty, you can find and leverage opportunities for good. And I still I and so I just I believe, I'm hopeful. Um we know our work is more important than ever before. We can't continue to do the things uh that we've been done, that we've always been doing, the way that we've always been doing it. So really seizing this moment, um, working to identify the change uh that we want to see, that we've longed hope for for kids and families in this country, and really what we need to accelerate that um and what we need to do differently to make it uh through to the other side. I I've been calling them glimmers of hope, if you will.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think it's really hard to even hear Jen and her excitement and her voice and such and not to feel hope. But truly, prevention is possible. We've known that, we've demonstrated that across decades. The science is strong, we've contributed uh to that science. Certainly, our networks are using that great science. So I would say it's even more that it's not just seizing the opportunity, but it's our responsibility, having that knowledge to move forward, to stay the course, to make sure that even in a time where science is being threatened or data systems are, you know, data are disappearing or whatever, and funds in kind to support that, that we don't let that be it. But you know, we stay the course. We stay the course. We're committed to our values, that we want this for every child and every family in every community to have what they need before they're in crisis. We might say that we're all in a little bit of a crisis right now, or a big bit of a crisis right now. And so it's our responsibility to use that science, use that hope, and and keep it moving for our children and for our children's children.

SPEAKER_01:

What gives me hope is I go back to an experience we had about a month or so ago at the national office. We had a group of eighth-grade students who had the opportunity. They had a gentleman who provided all the eighth grade students with a little bit of money that they could go out and do some type of project to then raise more money and then to donate that money. And they selected Prevent Child Abuse America as the organization that they wanted to donate money to. So we invited them to the national office and they came in. We had the opportunity to take them around, we gave them donuts, of course. But uh after that, we we had some a chance to just talk with them about, you know, Melissa's question was like, Why us? Like, what you know, why why is it that you you selected us? And I was automatically floored by some of the responses that I was getting from these eighth grade students, and so we ran them through an activity where we basically gave them our North Star. And we said, What is it that that helps families achieve this North Star? And didn't really give them any more context, gave them big sticky notes, said you got five minutes as a group. I was absolutely floored by what we got back from them. They were saying things like families need connection, families need access to livable wages, families need access to health care. This is the next generation coming in behind us at some point. Jen, Nate, you, Melissa, I we're all gonna be retiring at some point in our lives, and we need to be thinking, and you asked the question of being intentional. I think that it's being intentional on how do we bring in the next generation that is gonna take the great work we've done and jump off our shoulders to do it even more. And so what gives me hope is that experience, and I think we need to be intentional on creating that as we move forward.

SPEAKER_00:

Back to the impact question and comments that we all made is that we believe strongly that the impact is in the primary prevention space, right? We believe the most impact we're gonna have in this country is around ensuring the conditions, right, for all kids and families and communities to thrive. And that means access to food. It means access to free school lunches, right? It's not more child welfare caseworkers. It's making sure that kids and families have what they need so that they can live happy and healthy and safe lives, um, and they can keep their kids safe and their families strong. And so we believe that's really where the investment needs to be made, where the impact is. Um, and we have that data. Bart's got that data about the cost effectiveness of prevention. And that's where we need to spend our time and energy.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I truly believe that this is the next great chapter in the American story. And I have to tell you how refreshing it is to hear this perspective from this leadership team because that's where we come together around this North Star. Now, I want to lean into that last part of this question, though. How can we be impactful? We've got a lot ahead of us. What are some of the action steps that we can take so to be part of this positive movement?

SPEAKER_00:

I'll I'll just say one thing is that I think that we um over the at least my career, uh, and I've been doing, you know, child welfare and prevention work for probably 25 plus years, is that we've always sort of wanted to kind of disrupt, if you will, and change the long-held systems in this country that we know have caused generations of trauma for our families. Um, and I'm not just talking about one system. There are a number of them, right? Um, uh together that have done that to our families. But in order for us to uh to do that, we need to do it and we want to do it in partnership with families and communities, right? And we know what it takes. Melissa mentioned this earlier. We know what it takes. Prevention works, right? And so we just have to have the political will and we need the investment, right? Um uh and so we believe that um the what we need to do is really lean into this idea of ecosystems of supports that all families can access uh in their communities. And so um I think there are there are opportunities for for for a lot of folks to get involved in this um in this work in small ways, like coming to our conference uh or in big ways where you're working in partnership. I I have I I think we're all uh ecosystem engineers. We all have a role to play. And despite sort of where you are or what career you have or what profession you have, we all have a collective responsibility to ensure that kids and families have what they need when they need it in the communities where they live. Um uh uh hashtag Melissa Merrick's uh statement.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, I think how we can be impactful. Again, I I think we're we're quoting a lot of the things that that we hear from from Melissa and have for some time, but the idea that prevention happens in partnership. You know, we know that there's no one single organization, there's no one single model, approach, policy that is going to create that North Star vision that we have for children and families. And we have to recognize that. We have to recognize that we've got a small slice of the pie to prevent child abuse in America, but we rely on partners from other sectors. We rely on partnering with families, we rely on so many other things to create have this vision come to fruition. And so I think that increasing our impact has to do with realizing that we need to link arms as a field uh to be able to move forward.

SPEAKER_03:

I just think prevention is possible. We've demonstrated it, and now it's our time to maximize that possibility, especially at a time where it's needed now more than ever, right? And so, yes, we must do that in partnership, we must do that in community, and we have to do that with more than just our policies and our research. We have to do that with our hearts, we have to do that with our minds, we have to do that with our relationships, with our conversations, right? It's happening in every little moment. And so I agree, I hope people do join us uh in Portland, Oregon. I think there will be a lot of meetings of the minds and hearts, and you know, in small and big doses, there will also be dancing and sunshine and um laughter. Because also, let me just say that this work is really hard and we all know it. It's really hard. And yet we are needed for the long term. Right. So we need to have some levity. We have to have community. We have to have camaraderie. And we got to get to business. We got to get to work and prevent all the bad things and promote all the good things and do that with love and humility together.

SPEAKER_02:

This has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. And thank you for hosting the conversation August 12th through August 14th in Portland, Oregon at the 2025 Prevent Child Abuse America Conference. And you can invite upstream solutions into your feed by subscribing to the Shift Voices of Prevention today. Join us to create an ecosystem where children and families live purposeful and happy lives with hope for the future.