Located within the Department of Psychology and College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State University, our dedicated team of professionals includes researchers and faculty with expertise in fields of psychology, etiology and epidemiology of substance use, addiction counseling, data science, statistical analysis and quantitative methodology, and research coordination.

Dr. Crabtree is the current Director of the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research, and is Principal Investigator, along with Drs. Mark Prince and Kim Henry, on the Our Youth, Our Future project. This project has received continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1974, and examines the epidemiology and etiology of American Indian youth living on or near reservations. Her work focuses on identifying the risk and resilience-factors linked to individual health disparities. Since joining the Tri-Ethnic Center in 2018, she has developed a research program investigating the etiology of substance use in reservation-area American Indian adolescents using a strength-based multi-systemic resilience framework. Dr. Crabtree earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and has served as key personnel on a diverse array of federally-funded behavioral health projects across the translational spectrum.

Dr. Stanley is current co-Investigator (along with Dr. Swaim) on the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant that funds the Our Youth, Our Future project. She and Dr. Swaim were the founding Principal Investigators of this ongoing project. She also served as PI on a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) grant to examine contextual effects on rural adolescent alcohol use and a NIDA grant testing the effectiveness of the Be Under Your Own Influence communications campaign to reduce substance use among American Indian middle school youth.
Dr. Stanley’s work has focused on a variety of public policy, social, and consumer issues and has been interdisciplinary in nature. Dr. Stanley was also the Director of Community Readiness Programs at TEC for a number of years, working with many different organizations such as Boston Medical Center, the states of Wisconsin and Michigan, and University of Western Ontario’s Medical Center to address public health issues in minority and other communities.

Dr. Swaim is current Co-Investigator on the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant that funds the Our Youth, Our Future project.
He and Dr. Stanley were also also PIs on a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) grant to examine contextual effects on rural adolescent alcohol use and a NIDA grant testing the effectiveness of the Be Under Your Own Influence communications campaign to reduce substance use among American Indian middle school youth. With training in counseling psychology, he has conducted research studies of adolescent substance use, anger, and violence for the past 33 years. He has been funded by NIDA, NIAAA, CDC, OJJDP, and the Colorado Tobacco Research Program.

Dr. Prince is a Principal Investigator (PI), with Drs. Crabtree and Henry, on the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant that funds the Our Youth, Our Future project, as well as a licensed psychologist, a Visiting Associate Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, and the Director of My Mental Health Data Analysis and Dissemination at Keck School of Medicine at USC. Dr. Prince has received grants as PI, MPI, Co-I, or trainee across 5 NIH institutions (i.e., NIDA, NIAAA, NICHD, NCI, NICCH) and several other organizations including: the institute of cannabis research, USC Institute for Addiction Science, SAMHSA, and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Dr. Henry is Principal Investigator for the Our Youth, Our Future project, along with Drs. Meghan Crabtree and Mark Prince. Her work focuses on the psychological and social factors that produce or mitigate the health risking behaviors of adolescents and young adults. Dr. Henry’s goals are to develop and test theoretical models in order to understand the complex interactions of risk, promotive, and protective factors that influence these risk behaviors and, ultimately, to create and test methods for prevention.

Ms. Biggerstaff is the TEC Data Manager. She is responsible for designing online surveys for data collection and assuring the validity of the collected data in preparation for analysis and reporting. Ms. Biggerstaff has been the Data Manager at the Tri-Ethnic Center for 20 years and has worked on a number of other grants. She has a M.S. in Statistics from Colorado State University and a B.A. in Math from Kenyon College.