Nicholas Long University of Arkansas, Little Rock

Dr. Long is a Professor of Pediatrics and the Director of Pediatric Psychology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a licensed clinical psychologist. He is also the Director of the Center for Effective Parenting. Dr. Long has published extensively in the area of parenting and has been a frequently invited speaker on parenting at the national and international level. In addition, Dr. Long has also developed, evaluated, and disseminated various parenting programs. Dr. Long and his colleagues of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded “Parents Matter” study found that early prevention efforts with parents to reduce sexual intentions of adolescents can be effective. One-year follow-up data from the Parents Matter study indicates that parents participating in the prevention intervention, relative to the control intervention, demonstrated increased parent-pre-adolescent sexual communication and improved parent comfort with and responsiveness to sex-related questions. The CDC is currently replicating this study in Kenya. The CDC is also developing training materials for a national dissemination of this prevention program. Dr. Long continues to be actively involved in conducting parenting classes, having taught an average of 600 parents per year in parenting classes over the past 15 years. Dr. Long has a leadership role in several regional and national organizations concerned with parenting and children.