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Eugene’s Oregon Social Learning Center recently received two research grants totaling $7.46 million.

The largest, a five-year, $6.46 million Center of Excellence grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, will establish a national Center for Drug Abuse Prevention in the child welfare system.

Led by principal investigator Dr. John Reid, the center will include 11 multidisciplinary scientists and an external advisory board made up of local and national experts in child services, policy and substance use research. It will bring together scientists and national experts to integrate knowledge from 32 federally funded completed and ongoing studies, which will help fill the gaps in drug abuse prevention research, practice and policy.

Specifically, the center will study three primary focus areas: the relationship between stress, neurobiology and genetics and drug abuse; the role of fathers in the child welfare system; and an economic evaluation of a set of child welfare costs related to the placement of children in out-of-home care.

The other, a $1 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will support an ongoing study of long-term, professional youth mentoring, led by scientists at the center.

The grant was made to the national office of Friends of the Children to support the research, which evaluates the impact and cost-effectiveness of the Friends mentoring program. The program begins when children are in kindergarten or first grade, and continues until graduation from high school. The principal investigator of the study is Dr. J. Mark Eddy.

The Friends program identifies children at risk for serious negative outcomes when they are young and pairs them with a salaried, trained mentor.

Founded in 1984, the Oregon Social Learning Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to conducting research on improving the quality and effectiveness of psychological interventions for children and families.