Research

This research project will collect data from youth enrolled in universities across Ukraine during the winter of 2023. Data will include changes in adjustment, wellbeing, and optimism, along with substance use. Data will provide insights into how best to support the mental health of young people during a global crisis.

Project Description Family child care homes (FCCHs) are an important part of the early care and education system in North Carolina. While they make up only about a quarter of licensed care providers, they provide a critical service especially to families that work non-traditional hours, reside in rural communities or speak primary languages other than…

This project expands reach, builds capacity, and scales up evidence-based programs offering positive youth development and sexuality education to address health disparities in the most vulnerable areas across rural Eastern North Carolina.

This project aims to advance research on the relationship between economic well-being, wealth, adolescent functioning and mental health.

Project Description This study of the postive parenting app tests the feasibility and effectiveness of a mobile-based app intervention designed to enhance home visiting by providing in-the-moment parenting tips with the goal of increasing healthy parent-child interactions leading to resiliency in high-risk children. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) profoundly influence brain and behavioral development and long-term…

This study examines how net worth poverty – or household’s whose wealth levels fall below one-quarter of the federal poverty line – is associated with children’s cognitive and behavioral development. Most children who are net worth poor are not income poor, meaning that these economically vulnerable group of children have been conventionally overlooked in conversations about poverty.

This study provides an unprecedented opportunity to understand whether and how primals in early adulthood are predicted by childhood and adolescent experiences and how parents’ primals are related to their young adult children’s primals in the most diverse long-term longitudinal study ever conducted.

Project goal is to design, develop, and test an online professional development program called Bridging English Language Learning and Academics (BELLA) for improving teacher and student outcomes for working with English Learners (ELs).

The Durham Navigation Study is a randomized control trial to evaluate the impact of Community Navigation on outcomes for young children and their families.

Study of children’s and adolescents’ trajectories of mental health, immunization, and primary healthcare utilization in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. The research is being conducted in India, where one-sixth of the world’s population lives.

Project Description CCFP researchers have partnered with colleagues at The Hunt Institute and Child Trends on multiple projects for North Carolina’s Preschool Development Grant, within the North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education. The Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG) is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration…

Project to augment the longitudinal Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS) to create a national data resource, the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Rural Aging (GSMS-RA), for the study of early determinants of the aging experience in a rural context. The GSMS began collecting data on children, now participants are entering their 40s.

This project has been examining how race and nonverbal communication, such as gesture and affect, impact children’s learning. The team is now working to replicate their research in the lab and pilot a gesture intervention in first and second grade classrooms in local elementary schools.

The purpose of this project is to support the development and evaluation of new evidence-based plea bargaining policies and practices in the Durham District Attorney’s Office.

This study is evaluating a local program in Durham, NC, that waives the fees of those who have a suspended license due to failure to pay, in order to discover how reinstating drivers’ licenses can reduce barriers to employment and self-sufficiency.

Local social service agencies and health care providers routinely make decisions regarding a child’s risk for maltreatment. Yet, providers have limited information to guide their decisions and rarely receive feedback regarding the children’s long-term outcomes.

Evaluation of a unified strategy to early childhood development called Responsive Early Access for Durham’s Young Children (READY). READY was created by a Durham-based nonprofit in partnership with early care and education, pediatrics, family support, mental health, and homeless services organizations and professionals.

Baby’s First Years is a pathbreaking study of the causal impact of monthly, unconditional cash gifts to low-income mothers and their children in the first three years of the child’s life. The cash gifts are funded through charitable foundations. The study will identify whether reducing poverty can affect early childhood development and the family processes that support children’s development.

Evaluation of the Substance use Treatment and Access to Resources and Supports (STARS) program for pregnant women who have a substance use issue and babies who have been exposed to substances.

The Infant-Toddler Trauma-Informed Care (ITTI Care) Project leverages the existing early childhood education workforce support system to expand and strengthen trauma-informed knowledge and practice within the communities they serve.

The North Carolina Resilience and Learning Project is a partnership with the Public School Forum of North Carolina to promote and support trauma-informed schools across the state. The project team works closely with districts and schools to provide professional learning and ongoing coaching to meet school-specific needs and goals. Our work aims to create systems-level change by shifting the culture and mindset of an entire school so that staff begin to see a child’s behavior in the context of their life experiences, in consideration of possible trauma history or stress response system triggers.

This project is an evaluation of Benchmarks’ Partnering for Excellence (PFE), a model that seeks to improve the well-being of children and families in contact with the child welfare system and reduce the need for higher end behavioral services through a more trauma-informed community, which can result in reduces in behavioral healthcare expenditures.

Project Description The Durham Children’s Initiative (DCI) (formerly East Durham Children’s Initiative) is a place-based, nonprofit organization that supports children and families from cradle to college or career. Established in 2010, DCI’s vision is that all children in Durham graduate from high school ready for college or career. To achieve this vision, DCI provides children…

Building on the ongoing Parenting Across Cultures longitudinal study that began in 2008, this project will continue to follow participants in their early to mid-twenties.