Project Description
The Safe Schools/Healthy Students program strove to reduce school violence and promote students’ healthy development. The Center’s work involved:
- Researching funding opportunities
- Assistance to secure $7.5M in federal funds to reduce school violence and promote student health
- Staff training and supervision to implement evidence-based programs to reduce school violence
- Evaluating programs in accordance with funding requirements
- Assistance to comply with federal funding guidelines
Project Goals
To reduce school violence and promote students’ healthy development.
Project Results
More about Safe Schools / Healthy Students
The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative: A Legacy of Success
Project Description
Chronic truancy is prevalent among school children who are at risk. Truancy in primary school is predictive of truancy in later years, school dropout, and the closely associated problems of adolescence, including substance abuse and delinquency. Hence there is reason to believe that an effective program of truancy reduction in the primary years will be conducive to more successful trajectories for adolescents. Nonetheless, truancy prevention programs have traditionally been targeted toward middle school and high school settings and have rarely been evaluated.
The Early Truancy Prevention Program (ETPP) was designed in collaboration with teachers and administrators in the Durham Public Schools to prevent the onset of truancy among primary school students.
The Early Truancy Prevention Program takes a multi-pronged approach to improve student attendance and includes the following intervention components: a) universal teacher home visiting to establish a positive, collaborative home-school relationship and to provide teachers with information about student barriers to attendance; b) a smart phone for each teacher to encourage frequent communication with parents by text, email, or voice, as well as providing a mobile device to access online materials; c) weekly attendance data to alert teachers to students with emerging attendance problems (defined as those students with three or more unexcused absences in the last month); d) an online Attendance Information System that guides the teacher’s assessment of barriers to attendance for each student, provides suggested interventions and allows progress monitoring.
The ETPP was piloted in three elementary schools beginning in 2010-11. In 2012, the Duke research team received a Goal 2 Grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to develop and pilot this intervention further. In 2013-14, the intervention was implemented in 20 first and second grade classrooms in five high-poverty Durham public elementary schools, with 21 other classrooms serving as controls.
Project Goals
The ETPP is intended to improve attendance by facilitating communication between teachers and parents and giving teachers the lead role in intervening with individual students who begin to accumulate excessive absences.
Preliminary analysis indicate a statistically significant reduction in the number of student absences in the intervention group as compared to the control group. The number of students with 4-5 absences decreased 9 percent and the number of students with 6+ absences decreased 10 percent in intervention classrooms as compared to the control group. Teachers also reported improved communication between home and school and a high level of satisfaction with the program. The Duke research team has applied for additional funding to conduct a randomized controlled trial in two sites beginning in the 2016-17 school year.
Project Results
The Early Truancy Prevention Project - PowerPoint
Attendance in Durham Primary Schools - Memo
Attendance Information System Manual
Improving Attendance in the Early Grades with Enhanced Teacher-Parent Communication
Project Description
The Be CALM (Cool, Attentive, Logical, and Mature) intervention is guided by a theory of change that intentionally targets self-regulatory processes in need of support and development during early adolescence: immature cognitive controls, increased emotionality and stress reactivity, and responsivity to peers. This approach, which is delivered by teachers in health education classes and addresses required curricula objectives, targets both cognitive and emotional self-regulation, engaging teachers in providing “co-regulation” supports, and leveraging positive peer dynamics. The IES research grant was awarded to Drs. Desiree Murray (PI) and Jill Hamm (co-PI) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Leslie Babinski served as PI of the Duke University subcontract.
Project Goals
The goal of the Promoting Self-Regulation to Enhance Social, Behavioral, and Academic Adjustment in Middle School study (R305A170172) was to develop and test an intervention for middle schoolers targeting core self-regulation skills that are foundational for social-emotional, behavioral, and academic competence.
Project Results
Promoting Self-Regulation to Enhance Social, Behavioral, and Academic Adjustment in Middle School
Project Description
Child maltreatment is an important public health issue; exposure increases the risk of adverse health consequences including injury, substance use, obesity, depression, and death. The criminal justice system’s role in reducing such crimes is not well understood. Further, few studies examines whether Family Drug Treatment Courts prevent maltreatment.
Project Goals
This study has two goals: first, it will examine mandatory reporting by departments of social services to the district attorney when there is evidence of child abuse. The first goal addresses three questions: How do rates of prosecution, plea, conviction, and penalties vary within the state? What explains variations? How does the variation affect child maltreatment? The second goal examines whether family drug treatment courts prevent future maltreatment and foster placements.
Data used include five North Carolina administrative databases, key informant interviews, and 300 criminal child abuse files.
Project Findings
Project Description
This four-year study examined the prevalence, correlates, causes and consequences of the misuse and abuse of ADHD medications by college students at Duke University and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The main reason that students reported using ADHD medication was to enhance their academic performance, primarily by improving their ability to study outside of class. Most students who took ADHD medication for this purpose believed it was helpful and few reported any adverse affects. A number of students also used ADHD medication for recreational purposes, but this was rarely the strongest motive for their use.
Other findings: nonprescribed use was more common among whites than nonwhites, among students associated with the Greek system, among upperclassmen and among students who use other substances, such as alcohol, cocaine and marijuana. Of particular interest is that nonprescribed use was also more likely to occur among students who reported high rates of attention difficulties and who were concerned about their academic performance; this suggests that at least some students seek out ADHD medication to treat problems they believe are undermining their academic success.
Our findings suggested that it would be a good idea for the staff at college counseling centers to inquire about the use of nonprescribed ADHD medications and to consider that some of the students with whom they work may have ADHD that has not been previously diagnosed.
Project Goals
To examine the prevalence, correlates, causes and consequences of the misuse and abuse of ADHD medications by college students at Duke University and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Project Findings
The misuse and diversion of prescribed ADHD medications by college students
College students say nonmedical use of ADHD drugs helps them study
Project Description
This project developed a proposal for a center for applied public policy for The University of North Carolina (UNC) system.
Project Goals
The impetus for the project stemmed from a recognition that UNC — and universities generally — can do more to connect the knowledge they generate with the policymaking process. The project included studying policy research entities around the nation with regard both to their infrastructure and to the content and impact of their work.
Project Results
North Carolina Leverages State Research Capacity to Improve Government Performance
Project Description
Project Goals
To understand socio-cultural conceptions of marriage and childbearing. Results indicated that marriage and fertility are regarded as two separate decisions, governed by different factors. In particular, couples’ marital behavior is more responsive to changes in earnings than is their fertility behavior, indicating that economic standards act as a barrier to marriage, but not to fertility.
Project Findings
Early childhood family structure and mother–child interactions: Variation by race and ethnicity
Project Description
Write a book for educational researchers, and for those training to become educational researchers, to introduce basic normative concepts concerning education, in terms that they can use to guide and frame their work, and provide them with the intellectual resources needed to scrutinize these concepts, make judgments about them, and apply those judgments in the context of their work.
The resulting short, monograph, was authored by four scholars – two leading education social scientists, Helen Ladd (Duke) and Susanna Loeb (Stanford) and two well known political philosophers with considerable experience engaging with social scientists and public policy, Adam Swift (Balliol, Oxford) and Harry Brighouse (UW Madison).
Project Goals
Our goal was to bring precision to the use of normative concepts in education research.
Project Results
Educational goods and values: A framework for decision makers
Project Description
The Dissemination and Outreach Core of the Duke Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) is part of a $12.5 million, five-year program awarded to Duke researchers to study the connections between autism and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Having both autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and ADHD can lead to more severe autism symptoms in young children, including tantrums, greater challenges at school and trouble making friends.
Project Goals
The Dissemination and Outreach Core connects Duke ACE researchers to the broader community by engaging individuals with ASD and their families, practitioners, scientists, and policymakers regarding important problems they face and helping Duke ACE investigators use this knowledge to design studies, interpret findings, and disseminate information to these stakeholders.
Project Results
Duke Receives $12.5 Million to Study Children With Autism and ADHD
Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development - 2020 Impact Report
Project Description
This project evaluates the first phase of America’s Promise Alliance’s new nationwide effort to deliver five ‘promises’ to 15 million young people between 2008 and 2012. The first phase focuses on improving high school graduation rates through a series of school dropout summits. The Alliance has planned a series of 50 state-level and 50 community-level summits as the catalyst for implementing national strategies to prevent youth from dropping out of school.
Project Goals
As evaluator, the Center will assess the scope and potential impact of the school dropout summits. In addition, the evaluation team will work collaboratively with the Alliance to finalize and plan for the implementation of its National Action Strategy.
Project Results
Project Description
This study sought to examine day-to-day variability in the work experiences (work hours; workload; interpersonal interactions with supervisors and coworkers; perceptions of discrimination) of Mexican immigrant fathers with young children (age 3-5) and how those work experiences affect family functioning and child well-being. Mediating mechanisms linking paternal work experiences to child behavior were considered in two areas: parental mood and parent-child interactions (quality and type of activities). Dissemination focused on North Carolina, where the data was collected, because it has recently experienced the largest percentage increase nationally in its immigrant population
Project Goals
To find how the work experiences of Mexican immigrant fathers impact family functioning and child well-being. Findings from this study had the potential to inform both policy and practice, and were disseminated to a wide range of audiences.
Project Results
Project Description
The Larry King Center for Building Children’s Futures is a new initiative aimed at improving the lives of children in Charlotte, North Carolina.
See the other page for earlier evaluation of the Larry King Center.
Project Goals
The Larry King Center has identified the following key objectives: improve school readiness, reduce the incidence and impact of child abuse and neglect, and increase access to health and mental health care. CCFP researchers evaluated this initiative. The first phase included information gathering from key stakeholders. During the second phase, this information was used to revisit the theory of change and to help align future activities with the intended outcomes. The third phase included developing an evaluation plan – including a quantitative impact evaluation – for the longer term.
Project Results
Project Description
The Durham Family Initiative was a 12-year collaboration with the Center for Child and Family Health supported by the The Duke Endowment to improve family well-being and reduce child maltreatment in Durham County. The endeavor began by providing community-based efforts to help families support their children’s health, growth and development in stressed neighborhoods through a System of Care model. It ended with Durham Connects, a universal newborn nurse home visiting program for Durham County residents which has been shown to improve parenting and health care utilization.
Project Goals
The Durham Family Initiative was founded with the goal improve family well-being and reduce child maltreatment in Durham County.
Project Findings
When the project began in 2002, Durham County had a higher rate of child maltreatment than the rest of the state, which itself was higher than the national average. With the introduction of a county-wide effort called System of Care and other coordinated efforts, child abuse rates in Durham declined 68%.
After a successful pilot, evaluation and randomized control trial, Durham Connects was fully implemented through the Center for Child and Family Health. It has become a popular program with families for providing support for children and families and to help public and private service organizations integrate their services so they can most effectively promote child well-being and prevent child abuse among Durham’s children and families.
Related Projects
Purpose
The Center for Child and Family Policy is partnering with the Center for Child and Family Health and ZERO TO THREE to develop a novel integration of Family Connects and HealthySteps in Guilford County, NC. Both are proven programs that improve outcomes for very young children.
Goal
The integration of the two programs promises to provide all children in Guilford County a continuum of services and supports through age 36 months, which will promote physical and emotional well-being and early readiness for Kindergarten.
Related Projects and Resources
Project Description
Interviews with active criminals and inmates indicate that only a small percentage who have had guns get them from licensed dealers. Rather, it seems that most acquire their guns by way of a willing third party; a straw purchaser; a trafficker, a friend or relative; or an unwilling one, that is, by theft. Knowing how big a role theft plays in gun acquisition has implications for how much effort law enforcement (ATF, local and state police) should place on theft prevention as opposed to impeding the illicit market. The FBI keeps a database of all guns reported stolen and it seems to capture a remarkably high percentage upwards of 75%–of all of the roughly 240,000 guns stolen from homes each year (according to the National Crime Victims Survey) and the 6,000 reported stolen from licensed dealers.
Project Goals
By searching the FBI theft database for serial numbers of crime guns that were confiscated by police in a given city and traced (trace database), the researchers can get a handle on the magnitude of gun theft as a source of guns used in crime.
Project Findings
Project Description
Project Aims
Aims:
- cultivate a sustainable interdisciplinary research team
- identify analytic approaches for strengthening cost and benefit estimates, and
- provide guidance around employing benefit-cost analyses to build efficient prevention efforts.
Project Results
Research Priorities for Economic Analyses of Prevention: Current Issues & Future Directions
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Project Description
Project Goals
Wide-scale implementation of the Triple P (Positive Parenting Program) intervention in Wake County.
Project Findings
Triple P: Positive Parenting Program
Online Positive Parenting Program Now Available for Parents in 100 North Carolina Counties
Wake County Groups Work Together to Promote Positive Parenting
Project Description
Center researchers developed a web-based data collection system to collect evaluation measures for the Title V State Abstinence Education Plan. The new system was based on the model that the Center for Child and Family Policy developed for the Child and Family Support Teams, which has been functioning for over five years. The model is highly reliable and sensitive to student confidentiality requirements and allowed project staff to accurately collect and record the appropriate data on clients served by the program.
Project Goals
Create a database with information that is reliable and confidential to evaluate the Title V State Abstinence Education Plan.
Project Findings
Title V State Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Grant Program
Abstinence Education Programs: Definition, Funding, and Impact on Teen Sexual Behavior
Project Description
The Building Strong Families (BSF) project, a randomized control trial to enhance relationships among new parents, had few effects on the families involved. The treatment, which consisted of counseling, relationship skill training, and other family support services, had little impact on relationship outcomes, parenting measures, or child well-being. Three years after randomization, the treatment group, relative to the control group, was no more likely to be married, did not report higher quality parent-child interactions, or have children that had higher achievement test scores. Subgroup analyses, based on relationship quality, multiple partner fertility, fathers’ earnings, race and ethnicity, and the age of the parents, likewise indicated no treatment versus control impacts.
One critical subgroup that heretofore has not been examined are the group of parents who met the “economic bar” to marriage, which consists of couples meeting a threshold of financial well-being, has been associated with transitions to marriage among low-income parents. It is out hypothesis that, when coupled with BSF services, treatment couples who met the economic bar would be more likely to marry than treatment (and control) couples who did not meet the economic bar.
Project Goals
Using the baseline, 15, and 36 month follow-up BSF data, our specific goals are as follows:
- develop a “meeting the marriage bar” index, based on employment, earnings, job characteristics, and asset ownership
- using propensity scores, predict from baseline characteristics which treatment and control couples were likely to meet the economic bar
- compare couples who met the economic bar, by treatment status, on measures of marital status, parent-child interactions, and child well-being
Project Results
“His” and “Hers”: Meeting the Economic Bar to Marriage
Project Description
Project Goals
Discover insights into who teaches what kinds of students, what determines teacher quality and how these concerns affect academic achievement and high school graduation rates.
Project Results
Project Description
United Way Worldwide provided grant funds to 14 United Way agencies in three states to increase the demand for teacher effectiveness. The underlying assumption of this initiative is that creating policies that promote the training, recruitment, and retention of effective teachers will lead to increased student success. Furthermore, it is assumed that elected officials, policy makers, parents, and a diverse array of other community members will drive the demand for effective teachers.
Project Goals
The Center’s evaluation plan focused on assessing the agencies’ efforts to build a diverse coalition of stakeholders, documenting the development of the communication and advocacy plans, determining if the plans were implemented as intended, and evaluating whether or not the plans show promise for achieving the intended results, namely, to increase the demand for teacher effectiveness. The lessons learned from this evaluation serve to inform the development of a more standardized implementation plan across sites that could be analyzed using more rigorous evaluation methods, such as an quasi-experimental design with comparison communities, to determine the impact attributable to the initiative.
Project Results
Project Description
A team of social policy researchers from the Center for Child and Family Policy and the Sanford School of Public Policy examined the connection between test scores and important outcomes that signaled or influenced the accumulation of human capital. The research had policy implications for high school graduation and post-secondary education rates, labor market participation, early child bearing, and delinquency and criminal activity patterns. The Center’s North Carolina Education Research Data Center was a central component of this project.
Project Goals
Discover connections between test scores and important outcomes that signaled or influenced the accumulation of human capital.
Project Results
Project Description
There is a concerning lack of available mental health services for children aged zero to five with serious emotional disturbances and their families in Alamance County. Alamance County Department of Social Services, through this grant, is building such services within the framework of a comprehensive home- and community-based System of Care.
Evaluation of this program includes both implementation/process and outcomes measurement at the system, program and individual levels conducted at six-month intervals for the duration of the program to measure changes over time. As part of the program, we are participating in a comprehensive National Evaluation, abiding by the reporting requirements outlined in the Government Performance and Results Act, as well as implementing a local evaluation.
Project Goals
The goal of this program is to provide evidence-based services and supports that will assist families in ensuring that their children are safe, emotionally and physically healthy, and ready for school. An additional goal of the program is to work with the families of children who have serious emotional disturbances and are involved with the child welfare system, to safely keep their children home and out of foster care.
Project Results
Project Description
Project Goals
Project Description
Child abuse and neglect affects over six million U.S. children per year. However, preventing child maltreatment and its poor outcomes is challenging due to lack of timely identification of children at risk. We lack a clear understanding of the types of interactions that at-risk children and their families have with professionals who could recognize risk factors and direct families to resources to help prevent child maltreatment.
The study hopes to reveal patterns of interactions with health and social services that could assist with the prospective and early identification of children at risk of maltreatment, facilitate determination of those child- and family-level factors associated with different forms of maltreatment, and enable evaluation of how children who have experienced maltreatment are cared for by the health and social services systems.
This work happens within Duke's Children's Health and Discovery Initiative, which brings together pediatric physician-scientists and faculty experts from a variety of fields across the Duke campus, the new initiative will drive multidisciplinary research collaborations focused on improving children's health and identifying pediatric origins of disease.
Project Goal
The goal of this work is to analyze how children with documented maltreatment have interacted with the healthcare system and local agencies prior to their referral to social services and/or law enforcement.
Project Findings
Project Description
Current research indicates that formative assessment programs in various states have resulted in improved outcomes for students. However, the degree of benefit varies widely and the specific impact of NC’s KEA remains unknown. Dr. Muschkin, Dr. Glennie and Dr. Lennon will conduct an impact study to holistically assess the impact of KEA in North Carolina by considering students’ academic outcomes in addition to a variety of non-academic outcomes. These data will be available through the North Carolina Education Research Data Center at Duke University. Analysis of these data will aim to reveal how KEA benefits North Carolina’s students, and more specifically, how it may differently benefit students from less advantaged demographic groups. Additionally, the research team will use the impact study findings to develop a survey of teachers in grades K-3, designed to address potential issues with KEA and to assess how teachers use student assessments in practice. A pilot survey will be tested in 2018, and the researches will seek grant funding in order to administer the survey to a representative sample of teachers across the state. This survey will identify and explore factors that influence the varying effectiveness of assessment programs, a topic that remains unexplained in existing literature.
Project Goals
Dr. Muschkin, Dr. Glennie and Dr. Lennon aim to holistically assess the NC Department of Public Instruction’s Kindergarten Entry Formative test (KEA), particularly in regards to its impact on at risk student populations.
Project Results
About the Kindergarten Entry Assessment
NC Department of Public Instruction: Kindergarten
Can a new way of assessing kids entering kindergarten help them learn? NC hopes so.
Project Description
Evaluation of a new labor law, the Fair Workweek Standard, which went into effect January 1, 2020 in Philadelphia. The law aims to deter unpredictable scheduling practices, in which employers shift the burden of volatile customer demand to hourly workers by canceling or changing work schedules at the last minute.
Project Goals
The research project uses an innovative daily diary methodology to gather daily reports from 1,000 low-wage working parents in Philadelphia about work schedule unpredictability, pay, and worker and family mental health. Daily reports are gathered over two one-month periods, once prior to the schedule stability law taking effect and once after the law is implemented. We utilize a unique daily survey tool that our research team created and extensively piloted. No other researchers examining work conditions and family health are utilizing this type of data collection method.
Related Projects
Related Resources
- Fair Workweek one-pager
- Fair Workweek resources, Philadelphia Department of Labor
- Understanding How Schedule Stability Laws Affect Low-Wage Workers and Families: A Daily Diary Study in Philadelphia, PA
Project Description
Foster a global network for human development intervention research in low- and middle-income countries.
Project Goals
Project Results
Project Description
Evaluate the work and activities of the Larry King Center in Charlotte, NC.
Additional evaluation of the Larry King Center.
Project Goals
The evaluation of the activities of the Larry King Center involved four components:
- Survey with participants of the School Readiness Action Planning Process that occurred in 2011. The goal of this survey was to assess what activities have occurred since the planning process and what factors have prevented or facilitated actions.
- Survey organizations about their use of technical assistance provided by the Larry King Center. Because agencies that use technical assistance from the Larry King Center may be included as survey respondents in other aspects of this evaluation, care will be taken to minimize respondent burden. In particular, this survey may be a standalone survey for some individuals but be a module of a longer survey for other respondents.
- Telephone interviews with 7-15 key members of the Board of Trustees, the funders, and the Advisory council. The goal of these interviews was to obtain these individual’s perspectives and reflections of the progress that the Larry King Center has made since it started and how it should progress in the future.
- Draft a manuscript for submission to the NHSA Dialog: A research to practice journal or another peer review journal. We used the results of the 2011 school readiness survey and the follow-up survey to draft a manuscript for submission.
Project Findings
Project Description
This study is a collaboration between Dr. Gennetian and co-PI Dana Thomson from Child Trends and aims to advance the understanding of how Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) policies and practices may vary by race/ethnicity and differentially affect use among eligible Hispanic families with young children.
Project Goals
The study will examine (1) what individual and family factors are associated with the use of the federal EITC program among eligible Hispanic families with young children; (2) how state-level EITC policies and practices vary across dimensions that may be particularly salient for Hispanic families with young children; and (3) how state-level variation in policies and practices influence the use of EITC by low-income eligible Hispanics as compared with other racial/ethnic groups, thereby potentially contributing to racial/ethnic disparities in EITC use.
Project Findings
Project Description
Research Triangle scientists with demonstrated expertise in the pressing public health problem of child maltreatment planned to develop a multidisciplinary, product-oriented scholarly work group to address the causes, consequences, and prevention of child maltreatment.
Project Goals
The specific activities included:
- convening regular meetings to share research findings and to identify specific topics for collaborative work;
- developing collaborative research projects and grant applications that use secondary analysis of rich datasets available at each participating institution (e.g., NSCAW at Research Triangle Institute, the Durham Family Initiative at Duke, LONGSCAN at UNC-Chapel Hill);
- building on evaluations of ongoing child maltreatment prevention and intervention programs at the participating institutions (e.g., the Period of Purple Crying at UNC, the Durham Family Initiative at Duke);
- initiating new research and
- convening three grant proposal development meetings so that one or two proposal writing teams have dedicated time together to develop grant applications.
Project Results
Project Descriptions
Project Goals
xxx
Project Findings
Project Description
Center researchers have prepared three editions of the Survey of Substance Use and Abuse in Durham County, releasing the most recent in spring 2013, sponsored by Durham Together for Resilient Youth (TRY). The goal of creating the report was to better understand the dynamics of the substance abuse problem in the Durham community.
The first edition, completed in 2007, was done at the request of the 2005 Community Health Summit and the Substance Abuse Committee of the Partnership for a Healthy Durham. The second edition, released in 2010, was funded by The Durham Center.
Substance use and addiction affect every aspect of the Durham community. One can see the effects in the homes, churches, and places of work, as well as in the emergency rooms, criminal justice system, child welfare system and homeless shelters. This report documents how substance abuse impacts the lives and families of people in the Durham community.
Researchers used the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) Substance Abuse Surveillance Network model to document the many facets of the local substance abuse problem. A substance abuse surveillance network enables a community to assess the various parts of the substance abuse problem by combining existing information from different sources. Analyzing the problem of substance abuse is like the proverbial story of people with blindfolds touching different parts of an elephant. Law enforcement, physicians, social service workers, and treatment professionals all see different aspects of the problem. They also record this information in different ways and in different places. A surveillance network pulls this existing information together to help communities define and determine the magnitude of drug problems.
Project Goals
Project Findings
Substance Use and Abuse in Durham County 2006
Project Description
The Doris Duke Fellowships for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect is designed to identify and develop a new generation of leaders capable of and interested in creating initiatives that will advance child abuse prevention practice and policy. Because the prevention of child maltreatment requires knowledge and collaboration from diverse fields, the fellowships are multidisciplinary in scope and approach. Fellows are selected from a range of academic disciplines, including, but – not limited to – social work, public health, public policy, education, and economics.
Sandra Nay McCourt completed the requirements for her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in December 2012 and was mentored by Ken Dodge, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy.
Project Goals
Fellows work on a variety of issues to improve the efficacy of child abuse prevention such as designing programs that attract and retain the most vulnerable families; creating strategies that better connect public and private efforts; and applying empirical evidence to improve practice and policy.
Related
Project Description
Although most children navigate the challenges of puberty and settle into adolescence without major problems, about 20% will experience at least one mental health disorder during their teenage years. Why do some adolescents struggle so much more than others? Decades of research in developmental science have demonstrated the mutual influence of genotype and early environment on adolescent adjustment, but we still know very little regarding how genes and environments interact at the neurobiological level to produce risk for disorder. Mounting evidence suggests that one pathway by which early experience “gets under the skin” is by altering patterns of gene activity – that is, by triggering epigenetic changes. For children with highly susceptible genotypes, early exposure to harsh environmental conditions is thought to trigger long-lasting epigenetic changes to the brain’s stress response system that may increase vulnerability to psychopathology.
Although this broad conceptual model is well-supported by experimental research using animal models, epigenetic studies of human brain development are rare. This project adds measures of DNA methylation to two studies of adolescent development with rich existing measures of early environment, genes, brain, and behavior: (a) the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) study, based out of the Center for Child and Family Policy, and (b) the Teen Alcohol Outcomes Study (TAOS), directed by Doug Williamson at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
Project Goals
Our primary objective is to identify patterns of DNA methylation associated with neural markers of risk for psychopathology. The long-term goal of this program of research is to elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying genetic and environmental influences on healthy and disordered development.
Project Findings
Project Description
There is very limited cross-cultural evidence on the relationship among parenting practices, children’s emotions, children’s social behaviors, and children’s general well-being. I have teamed up with a young scholar, Dr. Laura DiGuinta, in Italy to examine how culture influences these factors. We collected data from 460 11- to 12-year-old children and their parents who were previously involved in the Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) in Durham, NC, USA as well as Rome and Naples, Italy. We hypothesized that culture will affect how parenting practices influence children’s abilities to control and express their emotions as well as accurately interpret social situations.
This project capitalized on the unique intellectual communities at Sapienza and Duke University, stimulating unique scientific cross-cultural conversations. Our in-person discussions and research findings were used to draw implications for child/adolescent policies, prevention programs, and interventions.
Support from the Jacobs Foundation facilitated data collection and analysis, ultimately expediting scientific reports, national and international presentations, and dissemination of policy briefs.
Project Goals
The goal of this project is to examine how culture influences the relationship among parenting practices, children’s emotions, children’s social behaviors, and children’s general well-being.
Project Findings
Project Description
The issue of so-called “on-call scheduling,” in which employers facing variable customer demand minimize labor costs by requiring workers to be available for work but not compensating them for their availability when not needed, is receiving national attention. Several localities have considered legislation to require large employers to commit to schedules with two or more weeks’ notice and compensate employees for changes. Thus far only three localities have actually passed such legislation, including Emeryville, CA, where last fall the city council passed the Fair Workweek Ordinance (FWO), which will go into effect on July 1, 2017.
Project Goals
The proposed project will evaluate the impact of the FWO on the day-to-day health and well-being of low-income Emeryville workers and their families.
Project Findings
- Work Schedule Unpredictability: Daily Occurrence and Effects on Working Parents’ Well-Being
- Panel Paper: The Effect of the Emeryville, CA Fair Workweek Ordinance on the Daily Lives of Low-Wage Workers and Their Families
Related Projects
Project Description
The U.S. Government has made the collection of large-scale individual-level longitudinal data for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade and beyond a major national priority, and has to date invested $500 million (with another $100 million slated for awards during fiscal year 2012) in helping states to develop the capacity to collect, maintain, and use these data systems for the purposes of data-driven decision-making. The Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Program of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences has provided grants to 41 states and the District of Columbia, with some states (e.g., New York and Texas) receiving over $25 million over the first four rounds of awards.
While most states’ data collection efforts are still in their infancy, some of the states with the longest-running student-level longitudinal data systems have begun to display some of the potential that these datasets offer for evaluating education policies and classroom practice and for monitoring student growth and identifying students in need of remediation. The National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER), first funded by the Institute of Education Sciences in 2006, has conducted a large number of evaluations of state and district-level policies in a set of partner states (Florida, Indiana, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, and the District of Columbia.) In addition, a number of other researchers have used these data systems to conduct policy and practice-relevant research in a variety of locations, predominantly in Florida, North Carolina and Texas, the three large states with the best-developed infrastructures for managing data and sharing them with the research community. In a number of instances, this research has resulted in changes in education policies and local practices.
However, while the research emerging from CALDER and other research teams highlights many of the benefits of using population-based individual-level longitudinal data to track student progress, this research also makes clear the limitations of relying entirely on data collected by state and local education agencies to make decisions regarding education policies and practices.
Project Goals
The stated purpose of these awards given by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences is to “enhance the ability of states to efficiently and accurately manage, analyze, and use education data, including individual student records,” and to “help states, districts, schools, educators, and other stakeholders to make data-informed decisions to improve student learning and outcomes; as well as to facilitate research to increase student achievement and close achievement gaps.”
Project Findings
Project Description
This project aims to discern how early conduct disorder leads to substance-use problems; to understand processes of resilience to substance use development among conduct problem children; and to test the efficacy of a conduct disorder prevention program in preventing substance use problems in young adulthood.
Project Aims
- To describe comorbidity, growth, and cross-temporal relations among violence, substance-use problems, and risky sexual behavior across development.
- To test a developmental dynamic cascade model that posits that child genetic and early life experience factors interact to produce later antisocial outcomes as mediated through acquired social information-processing patterns.
- To test the efficacy of the Fast Track intervention to prevent violence, substance-use problems, and risky sexual behavior in young adulthood.
Project Findings
A Dynamic Cascade Model of the Development of Substance-Use Onset
How Does the Fast Track Intervention Prevent Adverse Outcomes in Young Adulthood?
Project Description
To examine how children’s experiences with household net worth poverty and income poverty influence their well-being as measured through cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes. The sample of children aged 0-18 and their household characteristics will be constructed from existing Prospective Study of Child Development-Child Development Study (PSID-CDS) data. Descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analyses will focus on the estimates of independent variables – net worth poverty and income poverty – on dependent variables of children’s outcomes for children by age clusters (0-5 years old, 6-11 and 12-18).
Related Resources
- Net Worth Poverty and Children's Development Project
- Net Worth Poverty and Child Development Research Brief
- Net Worth Poverty and Child Development Socius (September 2022) doi:10.1177/23780231221111672
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Net Worth Poverty in Child Households by Race and Ethnicity, 1989–2019 Journal of Marriage and Family 83 (June 2021): 667–682
- Behind the Findings: Policies that Contribute to Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Net Worth Poverty
- Many Families With Children Experience a “Hidden” Source of Poverty
Project Description
Family Connects International is partnering with the University of North Carolina’s 4th Trimester Project to learn more about the postpartum experience. This work is part of a larger, federally funded project through the Health Resources and Service Administration to the state of North Carolina, called the Maternal Health Innovation program.
Project Goals
This collaboration seeks to identify, design, and test key elements of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Postpartum Toolkit. In 2018 ACOG released a Committee Opinion on postpartum care to reflect the importance of the “fourth trimester” period and to recommend new practices for care. The ACOG Postpartum Toolkit includes 27 different strategies for women, clinics, providers, and health care systems to operationalize the recommended postpartum care.
Related Resources
Project Description
The Prospective Study of Infant Development is a randomized control trial evaluation of the Family Connects program (formerly Durham Connects). In order to examine the ways in which family characteristics and community services are associated with family well-being, the Prospective Study of Infant Development interviewed families who had participated in Durham Connects on multiple aspects of family life, including parents’ opinions about parenting, child health and medical care, access and receipt of family services, and mothers’ well-being.
Following the 6-month interview, participant families were invited to participate in a variety of follow-ups, including an 18-month, 24-month, 30-month, 42-month, and 60-month survey.
The project builds off previous projects including the Durham Family Initiative and Durham Connects.
Project Goals
The primary goal of the Prospective Study of Infant Development is to find out how family characteristics and the community services that families receive predict child health and development, parent well-being, and parenting behaviors. With this knowledge, we are developing better ways to match families, both in Durham County and in other communities, with resources that will benefit them.
Project Findings
- Impact of the Family Connects Program on Maternal and Infant Health and Well-Being
- The effects of a universal short-term home visiting program: Two-year impact on parenting behavior and parent mental health (Child Abuse & Neglect, June 2023)
- Effect of a Universal Postpartum Nurse Home Visiting Program on Child Maltreatment and Emergency Medical Care at 5 Years of Age A Randomized Clinical Trial
- Effect of a Community Agency-Administered Nurse Home Visitation Program on Program Use and Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes: A Randomized Clinical Trial
- Randomized controlled trial of Family Connects: Effects on child emergency medical care from birth to 24 months
- Can typical US home visits affect infant attachment? Preliminary findings from a randomized trial of Healthy Families Durham
Related Projects
Project Description
The purpose of the "Impact of Toxic Stress on Self-Regulation: Implications for ACF Programs" project was to
- Thoroughly describe research on the impact of toxic stress on the development of self-regulation skills and capacity from early childhood though young adulthood.
- Review and describe the effectiveness of interventions to promote self-regulation for universal and targeted populations from early childhood through young adulthood.
The title for the whole project was “Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress” and resulted in a large series of reports and briefs. The “landing page” for the whole series is here: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/project/self-regulation-and-toxic-stress-series
Project Goals
- Review existing research on the impact of toxic stress on children
- Propose a model for promoting self-regulation across development that can guide programs, policy, and practice
- Explore the implications of this research for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) programs that serve universal populations — such as Head Start, child care (including school-age children), teen pregnancy prevention and healthy relationship programs in schools, subsidized employment and job training for youth who receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, transitional living — and for ACF programs that serve targeted populations (child welfare, runaway and homeless youth, home visiting programs that serve adolescent parents).
Project Team Members
- Desiree W. Murray, Katie Rosanbalm, Christina Christopoulos, Amar Hamoudi
Project Findings
- Co-Regulation: What It Is and Why it Matters (video)
- Policy Brief: An Applied Contextual Model for Promoting Self‑Regulation Enactment Across Development: Implications for Prevention, Public Health and Future Research
- Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Report 1: Foundations for Understanding Self-Regulation from an Applied Developmental Perspective
- Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Report 2: A Review of Ecological, Biological, and Developmental Studies of Self-Regulation and Stress
- Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Report 3: A Comprehensive Review of Self Regulation Interventions from Birth Through Young Adulthood
- Self-Regulation and Toxic Stress Report 4: Implications for Programs and Practice
- Co-Regulation from Birth through Young Adulthood: A Practice Brief
- Promoting Self-Regulation in the First Five Years: A Practice Brief
- Current Gaps and Future Directions for Self-Regulation Intervention Research
- Tip Sheets
Project Description
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. ITTI Care intervenes through training, consultation, and coaching at multiple levels of the early childhood education support system, using a trauma-informed approach to promote culturally responsive, relationship-based practices.
Built around promotion of adult capacity for self-regulation and co-regulation, this model centers workforce wellness as the fundamental component of high-quality early childhood education. ITTI Care works closely with teachers and administrators at all levels of early childhood infrastructure to identify individualized changes in policy and practice at the classroom, center, and systems levels, always prioritizing relationships as a central driver for teacher well-being.
Project staff will train and support classroom coaches to become experts in trauma-informed child care. These ITTI Care-trained coaches will train and coach infant/toddler teachers and child care administrators to:
- Promote understanding of the impacts of stress and trauma on infants and toddlers
- Develop infant/toddler teacher skills to form supportive, resilience-building relationships and environments, and
- Identify strategies to support child care provider health and well-being.
The ITTI Care model builds on previous work on the Impact of Toxic Stress on Self-Regulation.
Project Goals
- Build a professional development framework for the infant/toddler child care workforce across the state of North Carolina to promote trauma-informed child care.
- Improve caregiver knowledge about trauma, classroom structure and climate, caregiver/child relationships, and infant/toddler self-regulation.
- Evaluate the effects of ITTI Care on early childhood educator stress and wellness, classroom climate and relationships, and young child language and social-emotional outcomes.
Project Team Members
Ennis Baker, Sharon Little, Whitney McCoy, Roj Phillips, Lauren Thomason, Sonya Ulrich
Partners
- NC DHHS, Division of Child Development and Early Education
- Local Smart Start/Partnerships for Children (Anson, Cumberland, Wilkes)
- Stanly Community College
- NC Child Care Resource & Referral System (Child Care Resources Inc., Southwestern Child Development Commission, Child Care Services Association, Guilford Child Development, ITQEP Project)
- UNC’s NC Child Care Health & Safety Resource Center
Related Resources
Project Description
The Alamance County Health Department contracted with the Center for Child and Family Policy to conduct the external evaluation of Project LAUNCH, a demonstration project for the wellness of young children and the development of state- and locally-based networks for the coordination of key child-serving systems. LAUNCH aimed to create a preventive system of care for children birth-to-8 years of age and their families by enabling a child’s medical home to act as a portal for screening and identifying potential concerns in the areas of physical, social, emotional, cognitive and behavioral health. A medical home is a patient-centered, team-based health care delivery model led by a physician that provides comprehensive and continuous medical care to patients, with the goal of obtaining maximized health outcomes. Care coordination is an essential component of a medical home. Its goals are better access to health care, increased satisfaction with care, and improved health. The Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Physicians, and American Osteopathic Association have collaborated in creating this concept and promoting it across the country.
Five strategies were used to create the preventive system of care: developmental and social-emotional screens and assessments, integration of behavioral health care into primary care, home visiting programs, mental health consultation and family strengthening and parent skills training.
Project Goals
Project Results
Project Description
The Durham Integrated Domestic Violence Response System (DIDVRS) is a collaborative project that includes the Durham County Department of Social Services (DCDSS), the Durham Crisis Response Center (DCRC), the Durham Police Department (DPD), Durham County Emergency Medical Services (EMS), the Center for Child and Family Health (CCFH), Exchange Family Center (EFC), and the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy (CCFP). Funded through a cooperative agreement grant from the Family Violence and Prevention Services, Administration for Children and Families, the project aims to improve system collaboration among Durham community providers regarding their approaches, values, and assumptions when working on behalf of abused parents and their children.
Project Goals
The project is expected to result in improved outcomes for abused parents and children/youth exposed to Domestic Violence (DV) using strategies designed to: 1) improve the system and responses to abused parents and their children exposed to DV across Durham; 2) coordinate and provide new or enhanced residential and non-residential services for children and youth exposed to DV; and 3) enhance evidence and practice-informed services, strategies, advocacy and interventions for children/youth exposed to DV. DIDVRS includes a National Child Traumatic Stress Network affiliate (CCFH) delivering staged training in three key areas to partnering agencies including building awareness of DV/family violence, developing skills to screen for DV and its impact on children and make appropriate referrals, and improving system collaboration between agencies to improve services delivered to families. CCFP research scientists, Drs. Lawrence and Snyder-Fickler are conducting a comprehensive evaluation of this project which includes community-level, agency-level, and individual child and family outcomes to examine programmatic impacts.
Project Team Members
Nicole Lawrence (PI), Elizabeth Snyder-Fickler (PI), Matt Edwards, Pat Malone
Project Findings
Reframing Law Enforcement’s Approach to Domestic Violence Calls
Project Description
The Community Nonprofit Capacity-Building Project sought to support family-serving organizations in Durham by providing training, coaching, and technical assistance in areas such as policy engagement, evaluation, and evidence-based implementation.
Project Goals
This project, currently in the pilot phase, partnered with organizations to identify their needs and goals, match them with experts in these areas, and provide targeted support to build resources and capacity to meet these needs.
Project Description
This project built a Web-based data reporting system for describing trends in adolescent substance abuse indicators in North Carolina. The system was populated with data that is publicly available. This database included indicators of substance use from a large range of sources, including self-reported measures from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey and Youth Tobacco Survey and administrative data on arrests from the State Bureau of Investigation and on emergency room visits from the North Carolina Division of Public Health.
Project Goals
The data was presented in a format that allowed communities to identify their own substance abuse issues and to track trends over time. Investigation was underwent as to whether and how this information is valuable to communities as they make decisions regarding local prevention and intervention strategies.
Project Findings
Project Description
The GREAT Schools and Families Project – completed in 2007 – was a multi-site program to develop and evaluate violence prevention programs for middle school students. Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the University of Georgia-Athens collaborated on this project. The project was funded by the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was the largest violence-prevention study ever funded by the CDC.
Project Goals
Work completed on this project by the Center included:
- Securing funding to provide intervention services to students, teachers, and families in Durham middle schools
- Developing innovative interventions to prevent school and family violence
- Training staff to implement school and family interventions
- Rigorous evaluation of program impact
- Preparing manuscripts for publication and presenting findings at national scientific meetings
Project Findings
Community-Based multiple family groups to prevent and reduce violent and aggressive behavior
Project Description
The Duke University Fast Track Data Center provides all data files that are necessary to complete analyses to evaluate the impact of the Fast Track preventive intervention program, the factors that account for positive impact of the program, and processes in the development of healthy and problematic outcomes in high-risk youth. The study used the longitudinal data of the Fast Track study to test hypotheses regarding the role of early behavioral disinhibition in later antisocial outcomes. Analyses will examine trajectories of growth through survival analyses.
Project Goals
The Data Center’s work included:
1. Writing SAS programs and codebooks for all variables, concatenating and merging files, cleaning errors in data or documentation, and consulting with data analysts about the files
2. Responding to requests for data files from the Fast Track principal investigators
3. Maintaining institutional approval for research with human subjects
4. Corresponding with government officials and external scholars who request information or data files.
Project Findings