
Diana Fishbein
Education
Area(s) of Work
Biographical Statement
Diana [“Denni”] Fishbein, PhD, is a senior research scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She founded and directs the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives (NPSC), a large professional organization dedicated to the transfer of knowledge from science to public health policies. And she retains a part-time research faculty position at The Pennsylvania State University. Her expertise in the fields of prevention science, neuroscience, and behavioral science, supported by NIH, other federal agencies, and foundations, seeks to determine impacts of deleterious physical (e.g., heavy metal exposure, traumatic brain injury) and social contextual factors (e.g., trauma, family dysfunction, poverty, racism) on brain development and behavioral/mental health in children and adolescents. Her research supports the premise that underlying neurobiological mechanisms interact with the quality of our environmental contexts to alter trajectories either towards or away from negative outcomes, and that compensatory mechanisms can be strengthened with evidence-based practices, programs and policies. A wide range of approaches are applied toward equipping local, state, and federal organizations and agencies with the tools to implement, sustain, and scale strategies to prevent poor outcomes and promote health and wellbeing in children and families. And through NPSC, she advises congressional members, state legislators, state and federal agencies, national organizations and other entities regarding well-tested strategies shown to avert trajectories away from psychopathology.