Welcome to Prevention Research Training Program

Promoting Mental Health through Advances in Social Welfare

The University of Washington School of Social Work's Prevention Research Training Program (funded by the National Institute of Mental Health) supports social welfare doctoral students focused on research promoting mental health resilience and prevention of mental health problems and disorders. Students admitted to and enrolled in the School's doctoral program are eligible to apply for traineeships.

Program Description

The training program builds upon the strengths of our doctoral program, our exceptional multidisciplinary faculty, our capacity to address mental health disparities and diverse populations, and our extensive institutional resources at the University of Washington. Our primary goal is to produce a cadre of well-trained researchers who assume academic roles at top universities and who advance the knowledge base for developing effective mental health promotion and prevention programs.

The training program encompasses a relatively wide range of opportunities such as development studies identifying the characteristics of a problem and its development,, adapting or developing approaches for diverse and vulnerable populations, formulating theoretically-based preventive interventions, testing intervention efficacy and effectiveness, community-based partnerings, dissemination and sustainability of prevention, and learning statistical and research methodologies. The program is designed to foster rigorous, in-depth research training and has requirements beyond those of the doctoral program.

Ours is among a few doctoral programs in social work that have been awarded this type of training resource, and graduates of this program are now active scholars in mental health promotion research in major universities and research settings throughout the nation.

Traineeships include the following advantages.

• Up to three years of funded research training in prevention research with opportunities for collaborative and independent research.
• Mentoring relationships and sustained research with interdisciplinary faculty mentors from multiple disciplines at the University of Washington.
• Special program resources: access to national experts; workgroups and workshops; statistical, design, and measurement consultation; bibliographic databases; a special prevention issues and methods literature library; and an assessment instrument library.

The Prevention Research Training Program is an Interdisciplinary Collaboration between
School of Social Work	School of Nursing
Department of Psychology	School of Public Health
	Department of Psychiatry  and Behavioral Sciences