Research

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.

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

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.

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).

This study will evaluate the impact of cognitive behavior therapy delivered through virtual reality on job creation and business outcomes in youth and female-led enterprises in Nigeria via improvements in depression, stress, and anxiety.

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.

Together with the Child Trends, researchers from CCFP are gathering feedback from parents and providers on what they think makes a high quality early care and education environment for infants and toddlers.

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.

This research will provide an in-depth view of variation in state-level policy rules and program administration across WIC and Medicaid in three states and illuminate the consequences for policy beneficiaries’ ability to access benefits, engage with programs, and function as democratic citizens.

This study examines the essential nature of coordinating entities during a crisis by comparing the experiences of out-of-school time (OST) stakeholders in cities with coordinating entities to OST stakeholders in cities that may have elements of an OST system (e.g., common data system) but not a coordinating entity.

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.

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.

The Henderson-Polk Family Life Survey is an impact evaluation of the Family Connects home visiting program, when delivered using a hybrid telehealth model.

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 builds on the ongoing Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) longitudinal study that began in 2008 with recruitment of a sample of 1,417 8-year-old children and their mothers and fathers from nine countries. In 2020, COVID-19-related questions were added to assess behavioral and emotional functioning in relation to the rapidly-evolving situation in each country’s response to the pandemic.

Investigate the barriers and facilitators of applying for, receiving, and redeeming safety net program benefits, including the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in North Carolina. Including before and during COVID-19.

Thia study draws from quantitative and ethnographic data across three rural counties to examine how the distinct features of rural southern communities inform organizational practices of public welfare agencies in ways that reinforce racial inequality and negatively influences family processes and adolescent development outcomes. This study examines how rural contexts shape access to four prominent safety net programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, the Child Care Subsidy, and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

CCFP researchers are working with Families and Communities Rising to select, implement, and evaluate a school readiness assessment at their Head Start sites across Durham and Orange Counties.

The objectives of this study are to understand mechanisms in the global context through which exposure to different types of adverse experiences in childhood increases risk of adverse behavioral and psychosocial outcomes into early adulthood.

Together with the Hunt Institute, researchers from CCFP are implementing a collaborative partnership to support NC DHHS’ Division of Child Development and Early Education in completing updates to North Carolina’s Preschool Development (Birth Through Five) Needs Assessment, including information on the impact of COVID-19 on the child care and early education experiences of children and families.

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.

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.

This project seeks to understand whether, for whom, and how the effects of successful early childhood school readiness interventions are sustained across a child’s development.

Developing a better 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.

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.

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.

Many childhood interventions target low-income and high-risk children, with evidence that some early interventions improve adult health and wellbeing. This study asks whether children who benefit from early interventions grow up to become better parents and, subsequently, have children who experience fewer health problems, educational challenges, and emotional problems.

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.

Using the most diverse, prospectively studied, multi-national sample to date, this study will generate empirical findings to develop a model of child- and family-level mediators and culture-level moderators of the role of childhood risk factors and young adult competence and maladaptation. Cross-cultural comparisons will inform domestic models of young adult maladaptation.

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families is a collaboration between Child Trends and three university based research partners and serves as a hub of research-based information on low-income Hispanic children and families.

Around 1,000 hourly service workers with young children in a large US city were sampled with an initial focus on work schedule unpredictability and worker and family well-being. The data collection then shifted with the emergence of COVID-19 to reflect pandemic-related concerns such as food insecurity, job loss, income, and access to pandemic-specific and broader social safety net policy supports.

Project Description This longitudinal study is a collaboration among Auburn University, Indiana University, and Duke University that investigates children’s social development and adjustment by following 585 children from two cohorts recruited in consecutive years, 1987 and 1988, from Nashville, Tenn.; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Bloomington, Ind. The children were recruited the year before they entered kindergarten; the…

This project is a state-wide randomized controlled study of Family Centered Treatment. The project is implemented in partnership with the Family Centered Treatment Foundation (FCTF), a nonprofit organization serving over 60 sites across 10 U.S. states. FCTF provides licensing, training, and oversight of the Family Centered Treatment (FCT) model to human service organizations.

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…

Project Description Evaluation of the Incredible Years Dinosaur Classroom Prevention Program (IY Dina) paired with teacher training in Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (IYT). IY Dina is a universal social-emotional curriculum that trains children in the skills they need for self-regulation, improved school behavior, and enhanced social competence. IYT targets teachers’ use of effective classroom…

Project Description This effort will expand the operational capacity of the Guilford County Department of Public Health to implement the Family Connects model in support of Phase One of the Get Ready Guilford Initiative. Project Goals The overall goal of the Get Ready Guilford Initiative is to promote the health, development, and school readiness of…

Project Description Over the course of 18 months, Family Connects and Nurse-Family Partnership proposed to develop, field test, and implement an innovative approach to reaching and serving all pregnant women in three zip codes in Guilford County, NC. Project Goals Our goal is to have an impact on the entire population of women giving birth…

Project Description Principal Investigator Desiree W. Murray, co-Investigator David Rabiner, and research staff investigated whether the Incredible Years Teacher Program (IYT) had an impact on K-2 students’ attention, social-emotional functioning, and academic achievement. The Incredible Years Training Series, developed by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, is a multi-component evidence-based intervention for young children including parent training, teacher training,…

Project Description The objective of this research was to explore the use of state-of-the-science brain imaging and analysis procedures in evaluating the effectiveness of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) used in the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign. This objective was accomplished by pursuing three specific aims: 1) identifying and cataloging features of youth-focused PSAs featured in…

Project Description Hispanic youth represent a growing proportion of America’s future workforce. The vast majority are U.S.-born and raised in income-poor households, yet little is understood about the influence of social and income security policy on their well-being. Despite eligibility, Hispanic families are less likely to receive income assistance than their peers. Resulting differences in…

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…

Project Description This project evaluated the School Based Child and Family Support Team (CFST) Initiative, which provides appropriate family-centered, strengths-based community services and supports to those children at risk of school failure or out-of-home placements as a result of physical, social, legal, emotional or developmental factors that affect their academic performance. Early results indicated that…

Project Description The harms of substance use and the specific public policies implemented for combating substance use are associated with societal costs estimated at over $500 billion annually in the U.S. alone. Prevailing debates on public policies for curbing substance use focus on the relative merits of employing a public health approach- awareness, prevention, and…

Project Description The Center partnered with the N.C. Division of Social Services, county-level departments of social services, other contractors and families for the project. Analysis of data from both the SOC and Multiple Response System (MRS) evaluations has shown that implementing MRS and SOC simultaneously not only enhanced the implementation of MRS, but also provided positive…

Project Description The Children’s Bureau awarded the Alamance County Department of Social Services (ACDSS) one of five national grants to demonstrate the use of Comprehensive Family Assessments (CFA) to improve child welfare outcomes. The Center for Child and Family Policy partnered with ACDSS to develop, implement, and evaluate an evidence-based model for conducting comprehensive family assessments,…

In collaboration with Laurence Steinberg of Temple University and grant funding from the Jacobs Foundation, Decision-Making in Everyday Life was an assessment of judgment, decision-making, and psychosocial development from over 350 participants in Durham and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The measures used were also being administered in China, Colombia, Cyprus, India, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, and Thailand. The assessment included questions about several aspects of development that affect the choices young people make, including choices to engage in risky and antisocial behavior. These aspects of development included impulsivity, foresight, sensation-seeking, planning, and reward salience.

Project Description This project evaluated the QuitAssist™ Web site, a smoking cessation resource site developed and maintained by Philip Morris USA. The evaluation involved six studies, ranging from a large-scale survey to a usability analysis involving smoking cessation and Web design experts. If the evaluation finds that this Web-based resource facilitates smoking cessation, it will…

Project Description The Week in the Life Study used mobile touchscreen devices to understand how adolescents’ daily experiences affect their mental and physical well-being in everyday life. Project Goals In doing so, the study aimed to answer the following questions: What are the most frequently experienced stressors (negative events) and uplifts (positive events) in adolescents’…

Project Description Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have devastating effects on health and behavior. But many children avoid such dire outcomes, even thrive, despite exposures to multiple ACEs. It is not known, however, whether this individual resilience will be sustained into adulthood and transmitted to the next generation. This project brings together a longitudinal, community…

Project Description Although prevention scientists have documented effective interventions to prevent adult substance abuse, antisocial behavior, and risky sexual behavior, these interventions have not been applied to optimize return on investment and thus have not yet been fully embraced by communities. We propose mapping the relations between early risk profiles (and preventive intervention) and adult…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Project Description This study examined a socio-cultural conception of marriage and childbearing by combining qualitative and quantitative analyses to understand the roles of marriage and fertility in the lives of adolescents and young adults. Project Goals To understand socio-cultural conceptions of marriage and childbearing. Results indicated that marriage and fertility are regarded as two separate…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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. 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…

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…

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…

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….

Project Description Key experts will be brought together to advance the economic analysis of substance abuse prevention. 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

Researcher Katie Rosanbalm served as a consultant/collaborator to the Wake County Public School System for this project, helping them with the planning phase for wide-scale implementation of the Triple P (positive parenting program) intervention within Wake County.

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…

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…

Project Description This study harvests state administrative data for insights into who teaches what kinds of students, what determines teacher quality and how these concerns affect academic achievement and high school graduation rates. The research, on public school teachers and students in kindergarten through 12th grade, concentrates on interactions among teacher hiring, compensation, assignment and…

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,…

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…

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…

Project Description A collaborative project with the Oak Foundation. Project Goals A multi-disciplinary Center team is working with the Oak Foundation and its grantees to assist them in building stronger organizations to realize outcomes at the individual, organizational and community levels. The project team applies tailored technical assistance to help organizations enhance their infrastructure and…

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…

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…

Evaluation of a new labor law, the Fair Workweek Standard, which went into effect January 1, 2020 in Philadelphia.

Project Description Foster a global network for human development intervention research in low- and middle-income countries. Project Goals The goal of this project is to foster the development of a new global network for human development intervention research in low- and middle-income countries. Using the new global network, a researcher or interventionist would be able…

Project Description Evaluate the work and activities of the Larry King Center in Charlotte, NC. 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…

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)…

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…

Project Descriptions The Center serves as the evaluator for the evaluation efforts for the North Carolina Central University Campus Community Coalition SAMHSA project. 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….

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Project Description The National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) received funding from the Gates Foundation for this project. The American Institutes of Research (AIR) was the main contractor and worked with subcontractors from several universities, including Duke University, who, among them, have experience working with rich administrative data in North…

Project Description This includes an evaluation of the Hill Center Reading Achievement Program (HillRAP) as implemented in the Durham Public Schools from September 2008 to June 2010. The Center for Child and Family Policy conducted this evaluation in collaboration with the Durham Public School System and the NC GlaxoSmithKline Foundation. This study is an extension…

Project Description Amy Schulting has partnered with Macomb County Intermediate School District (MISD) in Michigan to implement and evaluate teacher home visiting as a kindergarten transition practice. MISD kindergarten teachers will be trained by Dr. Schulting to conduct a 30-minute home visit for each of their students at the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year. Teachers also will…

Project Description What features of adolescents’ neighborhoods, families, and peer groups trigger early substance use? How can contextual triggers of early substance use be targeted to promote healthy development during the transition to middle school? Exposure to alcohol and drugs during early adolescence carries significant costs to adolescents’ future lives. As a result,parents, teachers, and…

Project Description This project established and maintained databases for conducting study on high school reform and integrates the data with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Project Goals The goal of this project is to investigate the Early College High School model and its impact on students. Project Findings

Project Description The Durham Children’s Data Center was established in January 2015. Initial partners include the Durham County Manager’s Office, the Durham Public Schools, the Durham Partnership for Children, and Duke University. Initial funding for the Data Center was provided by Duke University. The Center is housed and administered at the Center for Child and…

Project Description The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration was an outreach program designed to provide intensive follow-up to police service calls involving persons with mental health issues and to divert them into community-based treatment. The Center for Child and Family Policy contracted with the Durham Police Department to provide technical assistance, data analysis and development…

Project Description Accountability programs are intended to induce teachers and schools to adopt more effective and efficient means of achieving set educational goals using a system of extrinsic punishments and rewards. In North Carolina, two different accountability systems were jointly adopted in 2002. NCLB focused on punishment for underperforming schools by introducing parental choice, after-school…

Project Description This project examined how cognitive control skills such as attention, working memory, and response inhibition relate to social-information processing skills and serious adolescent conduct problems (e.g., substance use and offenses). It also assessed the impact of computerized cognitive enhancement training on cognitive control and social information processing skills. Project Goals The primary goal…

Project Description This project represents the first efforts to ascertain the extent and potential repercussions of wealth and net worth poverty among minority youth. Project Goals 1. Analyze racial and ethnic disparities in wealth among households with children, and identify potential mechanisms that explain such disparities.2. Estimate levels and trends in net worth poverty for…

Project Description Accountability programs rely on high-stakes testing in order to measure progress toward equity in educational resources and student outcomes, with an emphasis on empirical criteria of improvement. These criteria have enhanced the collection of administrative data on districts, schools, and students for accountability reporting requirements, as well as focus on using this information…

Project Description An important part of the U.S. safety net, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides cash-like benefits to low-income people that can only be used to purchase food. My proposed project will investigate relationships between the timing of SNAP benefit receipt and children’s achievement test scores in North Carolina (NC), using a unique…

Project Description Candice Odgers is a newly elected member of the Child Brain & Development Program sponsored by the Canadian Institutes for Advanced Research (CIFAR). This award supports new and innovative research related to the goals of the Program led by Odgers and her research team. Project Goals Researchers with the program in Child &…

Project Description This Senior Scientist Award supported a portion of the principal investigator’s salary. Dr. Dodge’s research contributed to the societal prevention of serious problem outcomes, including substance abuse, behaviors that place one at risk for HIV/AIDS, and child abuse, in two related populations: multi-problem adolescents and young high-risk mothers. Project Aims The specific aims…

Project Description Children whose parents use substances or are incarcerated (or both) are at-risk for experiencing negative outcomes, e.g., physical and mental health declines, early substance use initiation, criminal activity, being exposed to maltreatment or harsh parenting, and poor school outcomes. In the U.S., at a point in time, 2 million children have an incarcerated…

Project Description This five-year project examined adolescent outcomes of a population-based sample of individuals who had been diagnosed with ADHD five to six years earlier. This study represented the largest follow-up of a community-based sample of children with ADHD that has ever been conducted.  Project Goals Examine long-term academic and behavioral outcomes for children with…

Project Description We combined the quasi-experimental data we have constructed on mass job losses by month in every county in North Carolina and by quarter in every state in the US (Ananat, Gassman-Pines, and Gibson-Davis 2013) with local area statistics on mobility by cohort (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, and Turner 2014) to identify how changing local…

Project Description Policymakers fear that the gap in marriage between low- and high-income parents may exacerbate inequality by increasing disparities in children’s academic achievement. Whether it does, however, depends on whether marriage causes improved child outcomes or merely reflects other advantages. We revisit this question by identifying quasi-experimental variation in whether parents who conceive non-maritally…

Project Description Center researchers Nicole Lawrence, Joel Rosch, Liz Snyder, and Anne-Marie Iselin helped Alliance Behavioral Healthcare secure a six-year $5.4 million federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This grant builds upon the existing infrastructure of Durham’s child and adult System of Care by targeting transition-age youth (16-21) with…

Project Description This study evaluated the effectiveness of two promising interventions – computerized attention training and computer-assisted instruction (CAI) – for 77 first-graders identified by their teachers as having attention difficulties. Project CLASS assessed the impact of these interventions on students’ behavior, attention and academic achievement. Students who received either intervention were more likely than…

Project Description Over the past decade, the United States has seen a marked increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities. We propose to analyze a potentially harmful, but unintended, consequence of such activities: its effects on the health and well-being of immigrant pregnant mothers and their children. We investigate the impacts of 287(g) programs…

Project Description This project provided a preliminary evaluation of the National STEM Career Platform, a web-based system for helping high school students identify STEM careers that match their interests and to become aware of the educational and career opportunities that are available to them. Researchers in the Center for Child and Family Policy created and…

Project Description The goal of the P30 Duke Transdisciplinary Prevention Research Center (TPRC) was to facilitate the translation of basic-science knowledge about regulatory processes and peer influences into innovative research efforts to prevent substance use and related problems in adolescents. As stipulated by the National Institutes of Health, a P30 Center does not directly conduct…

Project Description The North Carolina General Assembly in July 2001 mandated that the state Division of Social Services develop and pilot a county-level differential response system that used a family assessment track for selected reports of child maltreatment in addition to the traditional investigative process. North Carolina developed seven strategies as part of the larger…

Project Description Substance use is a dynamic problem that impacts a community in a multitude of ways. In an effort to understand how substance use affects Durham, this project assembled information from a variety of local health and social service agencies. The report prepared by Center researchers documented information on geospatial and time trends, on…

Project Description This project analyzes economic inequality among families with children in the contemporary American landscape. Our goal is to ascertain whether family structure per se has become more important over time in explaining economic inequality, or whether it is the constellation of factors associated with family structure that have grown in importance. To achieve…

Project Description The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports promising early-career researchers from diverse disciplines, who have demonstrated success in conducting high-quality research and are seeking to further develop and broaden their expertise. Selected as a 2010-11 Scholar, Dr. Elizabeth Ananat received funding from the W.T. Grant Foundation for this research. It will follow several…

Project Description The Duke Endowment and the Say Yes to Education programs requested that the Center for Child and Family Policy conduct a Feasibility Study to determine whether a comprehensive information system can be engineered for their proposed Guilford Initiative. The information system will track every child living in Guilford County over time, pull in…

Project Description Every summer, The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) works with four universities (Appalachian State, North Carolina Central University, East Carolina University, and University of North Carolina-Charlotte) to bring rising juniors and seniors from across North Carolina to their campuses for the opportunity to take part in a four week program…

Project Description Setting the Stage: Planning for Intentional and Effective Spaces and Places for Children is designed to identify best practices in the art of designing the physical and social environments in which children [live, work, and play] in order to promote positive mental health. Using a multi-tiered approach, including the thoughtful and consistent incorporation…

Project Description Funding was received from Durham Public Schools to evaluate the Magic Johnson Bridgescape Academy, a new alternative high school program, on the academic engagement and performance of approximately 100 Durham area students who previously dropped out of high school and have enrolled in this new program. The evaluation consisted of qualitative methods including…

Project Description This three-year study set will evaluate four types of courts, general, driving while intoxicated (DWI), drug and hybrid drug. Drug treatment courts (DTC) represent a promising innovation for dealing with crimes committed by offenders who have an underlying addiction problem. Specialty courts combine standard deterrence efforts with treatment. Project Aims This study has…

Project Description Book Babies is a program created by Book Harvest to provide Medicaid-eligible Durham area children with books. Book Babies staff visit families starting at a child’s birth and every 6 months thereafter until the child starts Kindergarten. At each home visit, Book Babies staff deliver 10 age appropriate books and spend time with…

Project Description This project brings together an interdisciplinary research team from Duke University, SRI International, Teachers College, and the Association of American Geographers to explore relationships between the socioeconomic status (SES) of students and their STEM learning outcomes. The motivations for this project are twofold (1) identify the links between SES and STEM Learning and…

Project Description This project involves data analyses related to early childhood programs and initiatives housed at North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, including the North Carolina Early Childhood Action Plan. Project Goals The goal of this project is to analyze early childhood programs within North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services. Project…

Project Description This funding supported an interdisciplinary team of scholars from economics, electrical and computer engineering, medicine, psychology, public policy and sociology in developing the capacity to embed ‘intensive measurement bursts’ into two of the most widely accessed and cited cohort studies in the world that, collectively, have assessments spanning from birth to the fifth…

Project Description This grant supported Dr. Jacob Vigdor’s research examining institutional factors that influence adolescent decision making processes. These factors include policies determining the grade configuration of schools and the assignment of students to classrooms, neighborhood-level influences, and incentive systems that aim to induce adolescents to avoid behaviors with long-run negative consequences. One study published…

Project Description This project supported the Center’s effort to help 12 rural North Carolina counties secure evidence-based mental health services for children involved in the court system. Center staff also helped to create an evaluation plan for the project. Project Goals The purpose of this project is to aid children and their families who are…

Project Description The overall goal of this project is to develop an understanding of the effects of housing insecurity on families in Durham County and the conditions and policies that contribute to housing insecurity. We will work with our community partners to identify policies and services that influence the impact of housing insecurity in our community….

Project Description Substance abuse is estimated to cost the nation over $180 billion annually, yet relatively little is known about whether current evidence-based preventive interventions can efficiently reduce these costs. In order to conduct high quality benefit-cost analyses of substance abuse prevention efforts, researchers will require (1) comprehensive cost estimates that account for the resources…

Project Description Students are expected to use their brain power to achieve academic, physical, and social success, although they receive no explicit instruction about how to care for and effectively use their brains. As neuroscientists and educators, we realize that recent advances in neuroscience about how the brain works have not yet been integrated into…

In 2017-18 and 2018-19, with funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, we provided training to 54 classrooms in Guilford County to promote the implementation of two of the Incredible Years Series of Programs: Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management and Incredible Years Dinosaur School.

Despite many years of research and rising suicides and a nationwide opiates public health emergency, we lack accurate and appreciable predictions of who will succumb to deaths of despair and who will be shielded from them.

The purpose of this study is to determine the efficacy of Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) with young English language learners. TRI is an instructional intervention and professional development program for early reading, designed to help classroom teachers acquire key diagnostic strategies for use with young, struggling readers.

This study tests a new teacher professional development program, Developing Consultation and Collaboration Skills (DCCS), for increasing the language and literacy skills of young Latino English learners. The DCCS model has three key components that coaches work with classroom and English as a Second Lanuage (ESL) teachers.

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.