Shane M. McCarty, PhD

Research Assistant Professor
First-year Research Immersion Program
Affiliated Faculty, Division of Public Health
Binghamton University

Hi, I’m Shane

I am passionate about creating a culture of care, health, safety, and wellbeing for all people. Too many people live shorter lives marked by needless adversity because we fail to prevent the bad and promote the good. I believe that complete health – the presence of positive wellbeing and absence of illness – is a human right.

Our failure to achieve complete mental health is explained in part by structural racism, corporate interests, zero-sum beliefs, a status-quo politics, and our own mindsets. I study the psychology of public health: the motives that move people to help others, by promoting health, safety, and wellbeing or by preventing disease, violence, and ill-being, and the health attributions that advance a structural view of health. Together with academics, community leaders, public health practitioners, and students, I aim to harness motivation and sociostructural thinking to promote the good, prevent the bad, and repair injustices so that we can actualize health as a human right for all people.

Research

My research advances the science of promotion and prevention: preventing harm, ill-health, and violence while promoting care, wellbeing, and peace. To date it has focused on youth conceptions of social behavior,1 promotion-prevention programs to promote prosocial behavior and prevent bullying in schools,2 a broader theory of bystander intervention3 and an upstander program to promote peace and prevent bullying,4 and youth-led approaches for health and safety, such as student-led efforts to promote resilience after a school shooting.5 My research page traces this work across six levels, from behavior to structure.

Practice

For more than a decade, I have designed and delivered team-based training on school safety, mental health, and violence prevention for educators and school resource officers,6 physicians and mental health providers,7 school administrators and dispatchers,8 and youth and adult allies.9

Highlights

  • 8 peer-reviewed articles, 7 book chapters, 4 Quarto guides, and 21 reports
  • 11 training courses for youth leaders, health care professionals, educators, and school-based law enforcement
  • $600,000+ as co-PI to develop and implement promotion-prevention programs
  • 150+ presentations, from invited talks and academic conferences to student assemblies and workshops for school professionals

Education

University at Buffalo

  • M.S., Community Health and Health Behavior, 2025

Virginia Tech

  • Ph.D., Developmental Psychology, 2016

  • M.S., Organizational Psychology, 2014

  • B.S., Marketing, 2011

Footnotes

  1. McCarty, S. & Dunsmore, J. (2022). Adolescents’ perceptions of helping and aggressing at school: Salience of benefit-harm, extent of impact, and collective dyadic power. Current Psychology.https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03806-4↩︎

  2. McCarty, S., Teie, S., McCutchen, J., & Geller, E. S. (2016). Actively caring to prevent bullying in an elementary school: Prompting and rewarding prosocial behavior. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 44(3), 164-176. https://doi.org/10.1080/10852352.2016.1166809 McCarty, S. M. (2014). Promoting prosocial behavior to prevent aggression and bullying in middle schools: an environment, person, and behavior-focused intervention (Thesis, Virginia Tech).↩︎

  3. McCarty, S., Arnold, M., Booker, J., Pacqué, K., & Liskey, M. (2022). Bystander interventions for promotion and prevention: Applying promotion science, motivation science, and behavioral science to upstanding. https://psyarxiv.com/9gdj8↩︎

  4. McCarty, S., Pacqué, K., Booker, J., Liskey, M., & Arnold, M. (2021). Designing a promotion-prevention bystander intervention program: Applying intervention mapping to encourage promotion and prevention upstanding. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/av8jh Booker, J., McCarty, S., Pacqué, K., & Liskey, M. (2024). Evaluating an integrated promotion and prevention bystander approach: Early evidence of intervention efficacy and potential moderators. Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community. https://doi.org/10.1080/10852352.2024.2313383↩︎

  5. McCarty, S., Pacqué, K., Gatto, A., Hill, K. & Charak, R. (2022). Youth-led resilience promotion during disaster recovery: A proposed framework, innovative program, and lessons learned. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy, 14(S1), S32 – S40. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001142↩︎

  6. Panagopolous, J. & McCarty, S. (2020). Preventing Problems by Promoting Positive Practices: An e-learning course. COPS Office of the U.S. Department of Justice. https://copstrainingportal.org/project/p5-preventing-problems-by-promoting-positive-practices/↩︎

  7. McCarty, S. (2021).Promoting Well-being & Preventing Ill-being within Program Committees: A team-based Toolkit for Well-being Champions. Toolkit for the Department of Family Medicine, PCBH PATHS, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX.↩︎

  8. Say Something Anonymous Reporting System. Sandy Hook Promise. https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/our-programs/say-something-anonymous-reporting-system/↩︎

  9. Programs. Promote Care & Prevent Harm. https://promotecare.org/programs-overview↩︎