IBS Associations
Director, Prevention Science Program
Faculty Affiliate, Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence
Research Interests
Prevention Research; Life-Span Development; Intergenerational Mechanisms; Gene-Environment Interplay; Substance Abuse; Crime and Delinquency; Research Methods
Brief Biography
Dr. Hill is director of the Prevention Science Program (formerly Problem Behavior and Positive Youth Development), Co-Principal Investigator of the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development registry, and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Program includes The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, and a newly funded Center for Resilience and Well-Being, which is a resource center for trauma-focused school-based services in the Rocky Mountain region. Dr. Hill’s work over the last thirty years has focused on understanding two questions: What are optimal family, peer, school and community environments that encourage healthy youth and adult development? And How do we work with communities to make this happen? Prior to CU Boulder, he worked for 23 years at the University of Washington as a professor and prevention scientist where he sought to understand the development and consequences of prosocial outcomes as well as antisocial behaviors such as drug use and dependence, crime, and gang membership, and the mechanisms of continuity and discontinuity in these behaviors across generations. In addition, his work has focused on developing and testing interventions to shape these outcomes, and on working with communities to improve youth development and to break intergenerational cycles of problem behavior.