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The Beyond Bullying Initiative was started by Paul Smokowski, Ph.D., LCSWA, CP with funding from the US DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Dr. Smokowski has an interdisciplinary background in social welfare, child development, and public health. He was a Professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for 16 years. His past 15 years of work in youth violence prevention culminated in the North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center (NC-YVPC; www.nc-yvpc.org), a nonprofit agency specializing in helping rural communities promote healthy youth development that Dr. Smokowski founded with a grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Smokowski’s research teams have been awarded more than $18 million worth of federal funding from the CDC, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Institutes of Health. As a prolific author, he has published more than 120 articles and book chapters on issues related to risk, resilience, acculturation, adolescent mental health, family stress, and youth violence prevention.
Dr. Smokowski has more than 20 years of expertise in Prevention Science, designing, implementing, and evaluating school and community-based programs to promote socio-emotional learning. He is a national authority on bullying prevention, school safety, and child and adolescent mental health and well-being. Dr. Smokowski received national awards for his youth violence prevention research, such as the 2010 Collaborator’s Award from the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama and the best article of the year award from the Society for Social Work Research and the Society for Rural Health. He served on the National Institutes of Health’s Youth Violence Consortium and was a member of the inaugural class of Health Protection Research Awardees funded by the Center for Disease Control’s Office of the Director.
Dr. Smokowski has extensive experience leading formative and summative evaluations. He collaborated on the Chicago Longitudinal Study, evaluating Child-Parent Centers for preschoolers by tracking more than 1,500 youth from preschool through adulthood. He completed NIDA-funded trials of the Making Choices Socio-Emotional Learning program for third graders. Dr. Smokowski created the Latino Acculturation and Health Project, a multisite longitudinal study examining youth violence risk and protective factors in Latino youth, and the Entre Dos Mundos/Between Two Worlds program for helping Latino immigrant families cope with acculturation stressors. This research program culminated in Dr. Smokowski’s previous book published by New York University Press titled Becoming Bicultural: Risk and Resilience in Latino Youth. In his Rural Adaptation Project, Dr. Smokowski guided the implementation and evaluation of a multilevel youth violence prevention initiative in one of the most ethnically diverse rural counties in the United States. In this work, he led a research team that implemented and evaluated the Positive Action universal Socio-Emotional Learning and violence prevention program in middle schools in rural North Carolina. His team also launched the Parenting Wisely program to serve high-risk families. They created a restorative justice Teen Court to divert youth from the juvenile justice system and stop the school-to-prison-pipeline that occurs with school-based disciplinary infractions. This Teen Court gave youth participants community service sanctions to repair the harm they caused. Dr. Smokowski’s latest book is titled Bullying and Victimization across the Lifespan: Playground Politics and Power. He has facilitated hundreds of presentations on child and adolescent mental health, bullying and victimization, school safety, school-based prevention programs, restorative justice, and many other topics that are germane to youth health and well-being.
Dr. Smokowski is available for consultation and technical assistance. He is a Licensed Clinical Social Work Associate, a Certified Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, a Certified Mediator, and a Certified Practitioner of Expressive Arts Therapy. He provides mental health therapy for children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He can be contacted at:
Paul Smokowski, Ph.D., LCSWA, CP
Director of Research, Development, and Community Impact
North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center
800 N. Walnut Street, Lumberton, NC 28358
www.nc-yvpc.org; paul.smokowski@ncyvpc.org; 919-428-5716