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.
Subscribe to The Shift wherever you get your podcasts.
Guest ideas or feedback? Email us at theshift@preventchildabuse.org
The Shift: Voices of Prevention — A podcast by Prevent Child Abuse America
Keep the Momentum Going with Melissa - Day 3
We’re in full swing now!
Day 3 is all about sustaining that momentum and making your dreams a reality. Melissa shares powerful strategies for staying focused, navigating challenges, and building resilience.
If you’re ready to elevate your journey and continue growing, this episode is for you!
Subscribe for more episodes
Hello and welcome to the final day of Prevent Child Abuse America's 2025 National Conference. I'm Nathan Fink, and I'm Luke Waldo, and this is The Shift. We're still recording live from Portland, Oregon, and Dr. Melissa Merrick. Melissa, let's look backward briefly. We've gathered here at an interesting time, a moment for primary prevention. Now we're in day three of the conference. Hearing what we've heard thus far, why is the fact that we're here a step in the right direction?
SPEAKER_02:Well, like we heard from even day one, right? Prevention is a love language. I just love that so much, and it's really so true to the work that we're all doing. We've long described our work as the work of love, and that we know that it is really making meaningful impact. But we're on this collective journey, right? And we know that prevention isn't a program. It's this mindset, it's this love language, it's the work of love. It's a movement, right? And so it can't just be a theory, it can't be abstract, it has to be a call for action. And that's what our blueprint for family well-being helps us articulate. Like, what are those steps that we're all going to take together? So I just think it's we are, of course, in the right direction because we are staying the course. We are staying the course at this urgent moment in our shared history, and we are really trying to, you know, chart the path for the future.
SPEAKER_01:So we've spent three days together. We've inspired one another, we've been moved by one another. So ideally, attendees are poised to leave, more prepared for that collective journey that you've just shared. What do you hope each of us leaves Portland with?
SPEAKER_02:Gosh, so many things. Um I hope that each of us leaves Portland with that inspiration uh to do the things, right? And there are many things that we have to do. And we have to do them in partnership. We have to do them in partnership with each other and people that we already know and roll in the same direction that we're rolling, but also with new partners, with different partners, with different sectors, right? And I think again, this, you know, we are trying to build comprehensive ecosystems of support. We are trying to not just change individual experiences, we are trying to transform systems, right, that have really taken hold over generations. And so that means we need to be designing equitable policies. We need to be implementing access and achieving access to services and solutions for families in a different time in this moment, right? I know we've heard a lot of ideas and examples of what kinds of uh resources and interventions and strategies have evidence for keeping families strong and supporting the conditions for health, well-being, and thriving. So that, again, upstream prevention approach and all the many things it takes is part of what I hope people are leaving ready to do.
SPEAKER_00:And our final keynote is the incomparable Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. How is her perspective and really her journey through all of this one that can launch us forward?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I well, I'm so excited to have Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris with us again. Um she and I go way back uh to my Ace's days at CDC and um uh before she was the Surgeon General. And, you know, really what I am impressed by is that over her journey of learning and um studying and and being in partnership with families, she's really just trying to test out things and not wait for perfect evidence uh to be able to bring more access to services and supports for families. So it's it's trying things out, right? Seeing if it works. It works in a California context. Let's take it somewhere else, see if it can work in a different context. And I think that that's what this moment requires. It requires us to sort of use the evidence, but use it to actually uh impact change, right? We can't just always sit in our academic research papers and sit and wait for perfect uh RCTs and data that confirm everything, right? It's like that's not just how this work is. And again, the urgency of this moment is we know families need a lot of support, right? None of us do this parenting job alone. And and so how we can get creative in testing things out and um is is one of the things I'm really excited. Uh PCI America has been partnering with uh Dr. Harris and her team to just test out what's possible. And I'm really uh excited for you all to hear about it. I think it'll leave us all with a sense of what to do next.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell So directly after Dr. Harris's keynote, PCI America has assembled a prevention panel moderated by Habiba Rashid Grimes to talk about what it means to commit to a future where all children and families can live purposeful and happy lives. Why is it so important to listen to the field on our journey to build prevention ecosystems that work for everyone?
SPEAKER_02:Goodness, it's it's one of the most critical parts, to be honest, right? We are we've long in this uh uh body of work thought that we know better than families. We know what families need, so we're gonna give you the things, and then when it doesn't work, we blame and shame you, right? We've come a long way, and Prevent Child Abuse America, I'm proud, has been at the helm of like leading a new way of no, actually, our ideas and solutions have to come from the community, have to be what the community identifies as the challenge and opportunity. And a big um shout out to Habiba because she's on my board and she's just a wonderful um partner in prevention and uses her own story too, um, and her own childhood to really bring things to life, like what um could have made a difference for her family and for families in her community, right? So I think that the prevention panel is the perfect way to end our conference because it's reinforcing that we need to co-design these solutions. We need to listen with humility, not for the answers we want to hear. Um, and we need to listen for opportunity to really make a transformational difference for children and families.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Melissa, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for hosting the 2025 PCA American National Conference from Portland, Oregon, and thank you for continuing to show us that prevention is in fact possible.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you, Need, and thank you, Luke.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:So, Nathan, we are on day three, our final day together at the conference. How are you feeling and what comes to mind when you think of the end of this conference?
SPEAKER_00:Well, for me, every time I come to these, I get so energized. I I love the people, I love the solutions, and then I hit this point where I realize that we have to go back from whence we came and try to make sense of what this moment at the conference means for our locations. And that to me is a struggle because I want to continue that energy. So I'm thinking about how to begin to approach the implementation of some of the wonderful solutions we've heard.
SPEAKER_01:Right. It's it's how how might we recreate not only the energy from this conference back home, but how might we also recreate the relationship dynamics, right? As you you mentioned, the relationships across different systems, right, different approaches, for that matter, different lived experiences and perspectives back where we work, we live, we play each day. And how might we then from there really compose an environment that carries forth the energy that we lived here in the last three days?
SPEAKER_00:Like you were saying, it it does, it's cross-sector, right? Like an ecosystem doesn't exist in and of itself, it exists between. So that's the important stuff, right? 100%. 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.