History

The Institute evolved from the Social and Behavioral Research Center for Rural Health, initiated and co-founded by the PPSI Director in 1987. The original Center supported a program of research directed toward the aforementioned goals. Through history, this program of research progressed to the point of organizing a dedicated research unit at ISU (PPSI), approved by the Board of Regents in 2004. Since the late 1980s, the Institute's research model has followed a developmental progression. The research model entails close cooperation with communities in which preventive intervention research is conducted, assisted by the Cooperative Extension Service, with each new major project incorporating a stronger partnership component than the one before it. PPSI was designed to build on this model, serving as a platform for a national network to support partnership-based prevention programming and research. In 2016, PPSI became the Coordinating Center for North American Universities in collaboration with the Colombo Plan-ICCE and the U.S. Department of State/INL to disseminate the Universal Prevention Curriculum within and through universities in the U.S. and Canada. In the summer of 2017, PPSI became a part of the Department of Human Development and Family Students within the College of Human Sciences.