UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted countless facets of everyday life during the past three years — including the invaluable work being done by faculty and staff members affiliated with Penn State’s Parents And Children Together (PACT) initiative.

However, after pivoting during the pandemic to a virtual model, PACT has returned to its in-person community outreach and data collection efforts in the greater Harrisburg area, according to PACT Director Dawn Witherspoon, McCourtney Family Early Career Professor in Psychology.

Formed in 2007 as a partnership between Penn State researchers and Harrisburg-based social service organizations, PACT strives to diversify the University’s research efforts while improving the lives of children, youth, and families of racially, culturally, and economically diverse backgrounds.

The multi-disciplinary initiative is part of the Child Study Center (CSC) in the College of the Liberal Arts and is funded by CSC, the Department of Psychology, the Social Science Research Institute, and the College of Health and Human Development (HHD) and its Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS). In addition to faculty researchers from Liberal Arts and HHD, PACT includes a staff and a 40-plus-member community advisory board made up of local residents and representatives from Harrisburg educational institutions, social service agencies, health care organizations, daycare facilities, and other community entities.

While much of PACT’s work involves face-to-face interaction for data collection, meetings and outreach, the pandemic forced the group to rethink ways to broaden and grow the initiative. Data is again being collected in-person, though, and Witherspoon and her fellow researchers said they are thrilled to be heading back into the community where they’ve already made significant inroads.

“We’ve been listening to the community and our community partners to get a better sense of when to reengage,” Witherspoon said. “Families are overburdened, so we had our community partners help guide us on re-starting our in-person data collection. After all, we’re very much dependent on the community members feeling comfortable and trusting us to do our work.”

“The community is becoming more involved again, and we at PACT definitely appreciate their partnerships and participation. That said, we’re also continuing to be safe and mindful of everyone's health,” added PACT Director of Community Relations Carmen Henry-Harris. “We’re glad to be able to assist our community members with the various projects that are of interest to them.”

Continued growth

During the pandemic, PACT kept up its community outreach efforts, from starting a virtual webinar series geared around topics relevant to the group’s constituents, to taking its annual research dissemination program to an online format.

The group also expanded its community advisory board and broadened its outreach to Harrisburg’s Latinx community by hiring Sandy Rosario to serve as its first Latino outreach coordinator. And, thanks to budgetary support from the office of Clarence Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, PACT recently began awarding its Dean Lang PACT Community Grants. So far, five Harrisburg community organizations have received grants — Black Girl Health (BGH), Latino Connection, GIFTS (Grandparents Involved From The Start), the KING Center, and the Salvation Army.

“During the pandemic, we concentrated on outreach, with our investigators working to give back to the community by providing expertise to the greater Harrisburg area,” Witherspoon said. “They’ve done numerous givebacks, from curriculum and grant development to the webinars. And we’ve grown and extended our vision as we’ve done that. Our staff has increased, and Carmen Henry-Harris continues to be very present in Harrisburg. Every year, we keep growing and expanding our mission and activities.”

Meanwhile, Witherspoon continues to encourage Penn State faculty to join the list of PACT investigators. Included in PACT’s long list of active research projects are:

• TEENS, overseen by former PACT Director Kristin Buss, Department of Psychology head, Tracy Winfree and Ted H. McCourtney Professor in Children, Work and Families, and professor of psychology and HDFS, which aims to understand what makes teenagers anxious by examining how emotions and behaviors associated with anxiety change throughout the teen years.
• Parent Regulation, Engagement, Stress, and Health (PRESH), overseen by Erika Lunkenheimer, professor of psychology, which studies how parents’ self-regulation, mental health, beliefs about parenting, parenting stress, and their own childhood experiences being parented influence parent-child relationships and child discipline.
• SIESTA Family Foundations, overseen by Douglas Teti, HDFS department head, Distinguished Professor of HDFS, and professor of psychology and pediatrics, which focuses on co-parenting and sleep in first-time parents who live together.
• HelpFUL, overseen by Carol Miller, professor of communication sciences and disorders, and Diane Williams, professor and head of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, which seeks to develop an innovative assessment process for children who are struggling with language and reading.
• RiseUptown, overseen by Martha Wadsworth, professor of psychology, a partnership of Tri-county Community Action, Penn State, the Harrisburg School District, and the RiseUptown community collaborative that is assessing the impact of the RISEUP (Resilience Intervention for Social Empowerment in Underserved Places) intervention program, which works to reduce exposure to risk factors and increase protective factors for middle school-aged children living in poverty.

“One of the main things that makes us different from similar projects at other universities is that at PACT, we have multiple projects operating together,” Witherspoon said. “We’re working on 10 or 12 at any given time, from pre-natal to young adulthood issues. Forming those partnerships within the community has been so crucial to those efforts. The people really trust us, and it’s gone a long way toward furthering the program’s reach.”

Impactful work

Witherspoon first got involved with PACT in 2010, serving as an investigator and associate director before assuming the director’s position in 2019.

Her research study, PARADE, was among those placed on hiatus by the pandemic. Recently relaunched, the study examines how African American teens (ages 11-17) and parents/caregivers interact with their environment, how they feel about the places they go, and how environment and culture shape their behaviors.

As part of the study, individual participants are given a smartphone for 21 days. Each day, they’re asked to answer surveys that gauge their activities, thoughts, and feelings.

“We started the project in 2018 and did our first data collection in 2019,” Witherspoon said. “We’re really interested in where people spend their time and how that affects their psychological well-being. We’re trying to understand and quantify the effects of environmental exposures on caregivers and adolescents. How do people experience places affected by their race? Ultimately, we want to use the data to collaboratively craft an intervention or program to help families in the community. I’m really eager to reengage in person with our families and be able to train my students to do community-based research on the ground in person.”

With PACT, Witherspoon said she’s getting to do deeply gratifying work that she puts on equal footing with her teaching and research.

“It really aligns with my philosophy of research, which I see as a means to make an impact on society,” Witherspoon said. “Doing this work and engaging with the other investigators and our community partners, I feel I’m making an impact both on an immediate and long-term level, and we’re getting to know the people of Harrisburg better and trying to address their needs. All around, it’s very rewarding work.”