The Center for Families

The Center for Families empowers all families to thrive in nurturing environments that meet their essential needs, reduce their exposures to risk, and enhance their individual and collective strength and resilience.

Our Approach…

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Discover

Promote the study of families from a multidisciplinary, life course perspective while also increasing the opportunity for new knowledge.

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Connect

Foster collaboration among academics, policymakers, and practitioners to identify where research about families is needed.

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Empower

   Identify high-quality family research from around the world, used to inform decisions that impact families.

LATEST RESEARCH AND NEWS

  • How SNAP Policy Changes Could Reshape U.S. Food Security and Nutrition Outcomes
    Heather Eicher-Miller – A 2026 study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition examines how proposed changes to SNAP, specifically expanded work requirements and the elimination of SNAP-Ed, could influence food security, diet quality, and public health in the United States. The research highlights how income instability, employment disruptions, and reduced access to nutrition education may impact families’ access to nutritious food, with potential trade-offs for health outcomes. These findings provide timely insights for understanding the connections between program design, nutrition, and overall well-being.
  • Symphony of cells: CFF Faculty Partner connects culture, behavior and biology to bridge social-emotional development with epigenetics
    Meingold Chan is uncovering how culture and behavior interact with biology to shape children’s development at the cellular level. By connecting social-emotional experiences with epigenetic processes, this work offers new insight into how early environments can influence long-term health and well-being. The research highlights the importance of integrating social, cultural and biological perspectives to better understand human development and inform more effective interventions.
  • Celebrating 25 Years of the Kanter Award: A Milestone in Work-Family Research
    When Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth created the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research in 1999, work-family scholarship was scattered, under-leveraged, and hard to build on. Twenty-five years later, the award she founded has helped shape an international field. A new study co-authored by Shelley asks what that field has learned, what it still debates, and what it needs to do next.
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CURRENT INITIATIVES

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Fellowship Lecture speaker Libby Richards at podium, the back's of two people's heads.
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Text: the Center for Families Funding Recipients. With five photos of recipients
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Families, in all their diverse forms, are the foundation of society. No culture has been able to provide anything better than the family for producing strong individuals for the journey of life.

—Dr. Donald Felker, Dean of School of Consumer and Family Science, 1987-1992

150+ Faculty Members

have engaged in projects that have added to the creation & dissemination of new knowledge

Who are our Faculty Partners?

$750 Thousand+

of funding provided directly to support over 175 students, faculty, & educators & their research & programs

Read about funded research & programs

30 Years

of harnessing the power of faculty, staff, students, alumni, & friends to improve our quality of life

Learn about Center milestones

YOUR SUPPORT MAKES AN IMPACT

Every gift, no matter how large or small, makes it possible for the center to be involved in innovative initiatives that impact individuals and families.

GIVE NOW