Richard Spoth, Ph.D., is the F. Wendell Miller Senior Prevention Scientist in the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute (PPSI) at Iowa State University. He was the Founding Director of PPSI and served in that role through Spring 2025. He also had leadership roles in PPSI Centers and Networks, including the Midwest Community-University Networking Center for Rural Health, the Coordinating Center for the Universal Prevention Curriculum (North American Region) and the National Behavioral Health Extension Network Clearinghouse. In these capacities he has led large-scale programs of research, funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His programs of research have addressed effective implementation and outcomes of community-university partnerships, universal preventive intervention outcomes, mediating and moderating factors in universal prevention, and engagement of rural populations in prevention, among other topics. By 2005, he was in the top 5% of NIH grantees for the prior 25 years. Among his NIH-funded projects, Dr. Spoth received a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for a longitudinal randomized controlled trial called the Capable Families and Youth Project. 

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Based on this work, Dr. Spoth was selected to be a Society for Prevention Research Fellow. He also received the Prevention Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research for outstanding contributions to advancing the field of prevention science, as well as the Service to the Society for Prevention Research Award, the Translation Science Award, and the Presidential Award for lifetime scientific achievement. Among other awards and recognitions, an early prevention trial for which he was PI, called Project Family, was one of ten projects selected for the National Institute on Drug Abuse's “Preventing Drug Abuse among Children and Adolescents: A Research-based Guide;” one of the programs it evaluates has received recognition from several federal agencies. Work on a dissemination trial called PROSPER has received awards from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the National 4H Council; it has been reviewed and approved by the standard-setting Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, and the Social Impact Exchange. He also was a lead developer of the community-based prevention series for the award-winning Universal Prevention Curriculum. In addition, Dr. Spoth has led or co-authored over 250 peer-reviewed journal, book chapter, manual and other manuscripts, including articles in leading journals such as Prevention Science, the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Child Development, the Journal of Family Psychology, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, with an h-Index of 74 (GS). 

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Along with the above organization founding roles, Dr. Spoth has joined with colleagues to spearhead the development of a number of national and international prevention- and research-related organizations, including the International Consortium on University Drug Demand Reduction (now including over 400 university/college members), the PROSPER Network Organization, and the Social and Behavioral Research Center for Rural Health. He was a cofounder and Executive Committee Member for the Iowa Consortium for Substance Abuse Research and Evaluation, cited as a model collaborative in the Bridging the Gap between Practice and Research report by the Institute of Medicine. 

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Dr. Spoth served numerous federally sponsored expert, advisory and technical review panels addressing issues in prevention research and research-to-practice translation, including an appointment by the Secretary of HHS to the Interdepartmental Substance Use Disorders Coordinating Committee. Additional examples include testifying for and briefing Congress, presenting to the Advisory Group for the White House’s National Prevention Council, serving on a Surgeon General universal prevention-focused Expert Panel, and participating as a panelist on National Academies workshops. He also has represented the prevention field on panels sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, including the Expert Panel on Prevention Standards “International Standards on Drug Use Prevention” and the Advisory Panel on the assessment of national prevention systems.