Members of the U.S. military need to be tough and aggressive in defense of the country but not when it comes to spouses and children. With help from Cornell University, thousands of U.S. Army and Marine personnel, their family members, commanding officers and special family advocacy personnel are supported worldwide to enhance family stability, promote personal growth and responsibility and prevent family violence.

"Soldiers and Marines and their families, especially the young families, are under enormous stress, coping with reductions in personnel levels, reassignments, frequent deployments and other unique stressors of military life. They need to be strong -- strong enough to avoid child abuse and family violence," said Marney Thomas, Ph.D., director of Military Prevention Projects for the Family Life Development Center (FLDC) at Cornell. "Our mission is to provide research-based materials, tools, trainings and other kinds of support to assist the Army and Marines with their proactive approach to violence prevention and to generally improve the quality of life for members of the armed services and their families."

Through a cooperative agreement with the Extension Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense, Thomas and her colleagues at Cornell's Family Life Development Center, in partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension, have been a guiding force behind "Strong Families, Strong Soldiers," a prevention-oriented program administered through the U.S. Department of the Army's Family Advocacy Program to foster violence prevention, family support and community safety.

"The Marines are working hard to develop a culture in which their values of honor, courage and commitment are applied to family life as well as mission readiness," Thomas said.

So far, more than 3,000 people, from the highest ranking officers down to enlisted ranks, from California and South Carolina to mainland Japan and Okinawa, have gone through the program.

Now in its fifth year, the program, which Thomas believes was the first national extension program with the military, is supported by numerous Cornell-developed resource manuals, guides, research updates, information databases, videos, curricula and marketing materials, specially tailored for Army families, commanders and family advocacy personnel. These resources are used on more than 114 Army installations in the world, serving more than 260,000 Army families with more than 375,000 children.

In a related effort, Thomas also works with the Marine Corps implementing and evaluating a violence prevention program with children and adolescents and those who work with them, including parents, child development professionals, after school caregivers and youth service workers.

Thomas and her team of about one dozen family violence, child abuse, youth development and parent education experts, therefore, are frequently on the "fly," visiting installations and bases from California to Germany, Japan to Korea to provide prevention trainings and to conduct research and evaluation projects.

For the Army's "Strong Families, Strong Soldiers" project, they have developed resource manuals for family advocacy personnel at every installation, desk and pocket guides on preventing family violence for commanders, an instructional video on case management, a brochure and training curriculum for parents on preventing child sexual abuse, an Army foster-care training curriculum, and marketing materials for child and spouse abuse prevention that include audio cuts, brochures and Internet resources.

To support the Army's current emphasis on program evaluation, the Cornell-FLDC staff conducted a major evaluation training conference in San Diego in January 1997, and research staff currently are evaluating the "First Steps" home visiting programs that reach more than 1,500 new parents on 14 installations. Marketing and information technology staff produce quarterly packets that go out to every Army and Marine installation to keep practitioners current on the latest research and resources. They are also involved in intensive trainings to teach personnel how to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs.

In addition, most of these materials are available on the World Wide Web, and some have been adapted by Cornell Cooperative Extension into publications for audiences other than the military.

"We're doing what universities do best: taking research and applying and disseminating it in ways that people can use to solve important problems they face," Thomas said. "And as a result of an evaluation survey on the Army project recently conducted by the Department of Communication at Cornell, now we have evidence that our approach and materials are beginning to change the soldiers' views of the family advocacy program -- that it's not punitive but rather a source of support."

The success of the "Strong Families, Strong Soldiers" program sparked the interest of the U.S. Marine Corps Family Advocacy Program two years ago and resulted in a yearlong series of family violence prevention trainings for senior noncommissioned officers and commanders as well as an innovative early prevention program for children and youth. This yearlong program emphasizes teaching, empathy, alternative problem-solving, anger management and trust and teamwork. For the past year, Thomas and her Cornell colleagues have tested a pilot program at one of the California Marine bases; this fall the program was introduced at two more sites on the East Coast.

"In our work with the Marines, we are making a concerted effort to change the organizational climate around family violence. This supports their coordinated community approach to preventing family violence following the Marine Corps model. We're not waiting for someone to get into trouble but, rather, are committed to providing information and preventative maintenance, as they phrase it," Thomas said.

Part of this training reinforces the peer or bystander model.

For more information on the Military Prevention Projects, visit the Website at http://child.cornell.edu/army/army.html.