The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
How do we create a future where every family is safe, supported, and filled with hope? The Shift explores bold, upstream solutions to the public health challenges facing children and families today.
Hosted by Prevent Child Abuse America, each episode features transformative conversations with experts, changemakers, and people with lived experience. Together, we dive into prevention strategies, policy breakthroughs, and the systemic shifts that have the power to change lives.
Part of PCA America’s movement to make family well-being the new normal, The Shift amplifies the voices and ideas shaping a brighter, more hopeful future for all families.
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Guest ideas or feedback? Email us at theshift@preventchildabuse.org
The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
Welcome to Our National Conference in Portland OR with Melissa - Day 1
Get ready to kickstart your journey with Melissa on the very first day of our special series! In this episode, she dives into the powerful themes of growth, transformation, and the importance of starting strong. Tune in for some game-changing insights and inspiring energy to set the tone for what’s to come. You won’t want to miss this!
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Hello and welcome to day one of the Prevent Child Abuse America 2025 National Conference. I'm Nathan Fink. And I'm Luke Waldo. And this is the Shift: Voices of Prevention. We're recording live from Portland, Oregon, with Dr. Melissa Merrick, CEO of PCA America, who Trevor Stores, ED of Alaska's chapter, calls our very own Oprah. Melissa, welcome to Mornings with Melissa.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, Nate. Hi, Luke. So excited to be with you. And I'll take the Oprah thing as a compliment, but I wish I had all of Oprah's money.
SPEAKER_01:But you do now have your very own segment. How does it feel?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's super cool to be with uh all of our attendees in this new way. You know, we're trying out a lot of different things this year to get people engaged. People want even more opportunities to connect with the content, to connect with me and my incredible team, our incredible networks of chapters and Healthy Families America sites and partners in prevention. So it's just awesome to do it in this like cool podcast way.
SPEAKER_02:I couldn't agree more, Melissa. It's it's exciting to see this many new faces and also to be in community with folks like you and uh your team. Um it's also an incredible honor uh to be co-host this year with Nathan and to be joining you uh on this podcast. So, as Nathan said, it is day one of the conference. It's the day to bring people in, energize the room. Uh what can we expect from the start of this conference?
SPEAKER_00:Well, energy, for sure. Uh, you know, energy, uh friendships, right? It's been so uh cool already as we're all arriving to see faces that we haven't seen since our Baltimore conference, or um, we've seen them on small little screens on Zoom. So it's really cool just to be in community with folks. I think that day one is gonna start just uh in a beautiful way with uh our our keynote speaker Desmond Mead and just like all these new ideas and things that you know this moment that we find ourselves in is uh is a challenging one for the work that we do and for children and families, right? There's a lot of pressures on them. So it makes the work that we're doing in partnership um even more important, and I think that that also is tangible here on day one.
SPEAKER_01:And you just mentioned Desmond Mead is our keynote for day one. Why should we be excited about his keynote speech?
SPEAKER_00:Well, Zah, it's really hard not to be excited about him. I heard him speak uh for the first time last year at a conference, and I think in my 25 years of going to conferences, it was the best keynote I ever heard. He's just an authentic communicator. He talks about his lived experience, his journey, his challenges with um incarceration and addiction, and how he's used those to really fuel this transformation in community. So really highlights the themes of belonging and resilience and hope. And I think it's something that we're all gonna draw great inspiration from again in these moments that can feel overwhelming and super complex. Um they help us, you know, he his words and the way that he shows up helps us see, gosh, there is a lot of hope. And we can make a change when we come together for children and families.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you can you you pointed out, Melissa, the importance of authenticity. And I I couldn't have picked uh a better person to start this conference than Desmond Mead. I think his journey uh is represented and his movement has really been represented by the authenticity and vulnerability that he wears on his sleeve. And I think it's a great place for us all to start to really inspire this movement, as you've pointed out, uh, towards uh uh a prevention ecosystem that will be critical to all overloaded families across our country.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's sort of, you know, it just highlights and reinforces that one person's lived experience can really power systemic change. And that's what we're about here when we talk about our um, you know, uh theory of change that we're now calling the blueprint for family well-being. It is about, as you said, creating these ecosystems of prevention, right? Before families are in crisis, we don't need to wait until families touch our deep end systems to really provide the supports, the nurturance, the guidance, the resources that they need to thrive, right? And so I think um uh Desmond really underscores how we can really shift mindsets, we can build trust, and we can mobilize momentum for real prevention progress when we come together in community.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Melissa, thank you so much for spending the morning with us. Can't wait to see what's coming for day one and throughout the rest of the conference.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, me too.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Melissa.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:You know what I think is so interesting about that conversation is the energy that bleeds through. I am so excited to be here, to be back in the company of our colleagues that are spread throughout the entire country. When we get together, we have this camaraderie, we have this vision, we understand again that we are not alone in the sector, that we actually exist in a broader ecosystem of this work.
SPEAKER_02:100%. I think what really struck me about the conversation is the fact that very strategically Desmond Mead was selected to kick off this conference as the keynote speaker because his work has been, his movement has been created by these deeply authentic relationships. And a conference like this, and day one in particular, is, as you pointed out, really about coming back together, right? Is recognizing who's in the room, who is clearly aligned from a mission perspective, right? We're all here because we believe we can do better for families, we can be better with families. And the relationships that Desmond Mead will be talking about later this morning as critical to his movement, I believe is essential as well to our movement in this conference.
SPEAKER_01:It's it's like that idea: strength begets strength. Investment begets investment. And you know, may there be a little bit of Desmond in all of us. Oh, absolutely. 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.