Robert A. Murphy

Journal Article Prev Sci · August 2025 Poor mental health affects millions of parents and caregivers each year. In the absence of intervention, the duration and magnitude of mental health symptoms can have an adverse impact on parent and caregiver well-being, parenting practices, and subsequent ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The effects of a universal short-term home visiting program: Two-year impact on parenting behavior and parent mental health.

Journal Article Child Abuse Negl · June 2023 BACKGROUND: At the time of childbirth, families face heightened levels of unmet need. These needs, if left unmet, can lead parents to engage in less positive parenting practices, which in turn, increase the risk of child maltreatment. Family Connects (FC) ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Evaluation of a Family Connects Dissemination to Four High-Poverty Rural Counties.

Journal Article Matern Child Health J · May 2022 OBJECTIVES: Home visiting is a popular approach to improving the health and well-being of families with infants and young children in the United States; but, to date, no home visiting program has achieved population impact for families in rural communities ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Maximizing the return on investment in Early Childhood Home Visiting through enhanced eligibility screening.

Journal Article Child Abuse Negl · December 2021 BACKGROUND: The MIECHV (Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting) program invests substantial federal resources to prevent child maltreatment and emergency medical costs. Eligibility is based on screening of demographic or clinical risk factors, ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Treatment Outcomes for Adolescents Versus Adults Receiving Cognitive Processing Therapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder During Community Training.

Journal Article J Trauma Stress · August 2021 Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a gold-standard treatment for adults with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, adolescents may also benefit from CPT, particularly when existing evidence-based treatments for adolescents are unavailable or no ... Full text Link to item Cite

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.

Journal Article JAMA Netw Open · July 1, 2021 IMPORTANCE: The Family Connects (FC) program, a community-wide nurse home visiting program for newborns, has been shown to provide benefits for children and families through the first 2 years of life. Potential longer-term outcomes for child well-being rem ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Military Life Stressors, Family Communication and Satisfaction: Associations with Children's Psychosocial Outcomes.

Journal Article J Child Adolesc Trauma · March 2020 Families experience multiple stressors as a result of military service. The purpose of this study was to examine facets of military life and family factors that may impact child psychosocial and mental health functioning. Using baseline data from the Mille ... Full text Link to item Cite

Randomized controlled trial of Family Connects: Effects on child emergency medical care from birth to 24 months.

Journal Article Dev Psychopathol · December 2019 One of Tom Dishion's most significant contributions to prevention science was the development of affordable, ecologically valid interventions, such as the Family Check-Up, that screen for child and family risk factors broadly, but concentrate family-specif ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Effect of a Community Agency-Administered Nurse Home Visitation Program on Program Use and Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Journal Article JAMA Netw Open · November 1, 2019 IMPORTANCE: Postnatal home visitation to support parenting and infant healthy development is becoming increasingly common based on university efficacy studies, but effectiveness when disseminated by communities is not clear. OBJECTIVE: To test implementati ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Therapist stuck points during training in cognitive processing therapy: Changes over time and associations with training outcomes

Journal Article Professional Psychology Research and Practice · August 1, 2019 Many practitioners have doubts or concerns about evidence-based treatments. The objective of this study was to evaluate such doubts and concerns, or therapist stuck points, during training in cognitive processing therapy (CPT). Data were collected from 57 ... Full text Cite

Disseminating parent-child interaction therapy through the learning collaborative model on the adoption and implementation of an evidence-based treatment

Journal Article Children and Youth Services Review · June 1, 2019 Evidence-based treatments (EBTs) for childhood disruptive behavior disorders, such as Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), have limited availability in community settings. Recent research highlights the importance of implementation support models to en ... Full text Cite

The Impact of Military Status on Cognitive Processing Therapy Outcomes in the Community.

Journal Article J Trauma Stress · April 2019 Military-affiliated individuals (i.e., active duty personnel and veterans) exhibit high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although existing evidence-based treatments for PTSD, such as cognitive processing therapy (CPT), have demonstrated effec ... Full text Link to item Cite

Moving Beyond Program to Population Impact: Toward a Universal Early Childhood System of Care.

Journal Article J Fam Theory Rev · March 2019 Families have clearly benefited from increased availability of evidence-based intervention, including home-visiting models and increased federal funding for programs benefiting parents and children. The goal of population-level impact on the health and wel ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Using a Learning Collaborative Model to Disseminate Cognitive Processing Therapy to Community-Based Agencies.

Journal Article Behav Ther · January 2019 Although effective treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder exist, their use in community settings is disappointingly low. Training alone does not necessarily lead to adoption. To address this problem, we trained community clinicians in cognitive proce ... Full text Link to item Cite

Mental Health of Children of Deployed and Nondeployed US Military Service Members: The Millennium Cohort Family Study.

Journal Article J Dev Behav Pediatr · December 2018 OBJECTIVE: Families experience multiple stressors as a result of military service. The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations among service member deployment experiences, family and military factors, and children's mental health using ba ... Full text Link to item Cite

Pilot to policy: statewide dissemination and implementation of evidence-based treatment for traumatized youth.

Journal Article BMC Health Serv Res · July 28, 2018 BACKGROUND: A model for statewide dissemination of evidence-based treatment (EBT) for traumatized youth was piloted and taken to scale across North Carolina (NC). This article describes the implementation platform developed, piloted, and evaluated by the N ... Full text Link to item Cite

How Medicaid and Managed Care Can Support Evidence-Based Treatment in North Carolina That is Informed by Adverse Childhood Experiences.

Journal Article N C Med J · 2018 North Carolina has increased the percentage of its clinical workforce that is proficient in evidence-based treatment and adverse childhood experiences-informed care. Medicaid and managed care have contributed through standards and reimbursement that are co ... Full text Link to item Cite

Can typical US home visits affect infant attachment? Preliminary findings from a randomized trial of Healthy Families Durham.

Journal Article Attach Hum Dev · December 2017 US government-funded early home visiting services are expanding significantly. The most widely implemented home visiting models target at-risk new mothers and their infants. Such home visiting programs typically aim to support infant-parent relationships; ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

An experimental comparison of web-push vs. paper-only survey procedures for conducting an in-depth health survey of military spouses.

Journal Article BMC Med Res Methodol · April 26, 2017 BACKGROUND: Previous research has found that a "web-push" approach to data collection, which involves contacting people by mail to request an Internet survey response while withholding a paper response option until later in the contact process, consistentl ... Full text Link to item Cite

A statewide nurse training program for a hospital based infant abusive head trauma prevention program.

Journal Article Nurse Educ Pract · January 2016 Successful implementation of universal patient education programs requires training large numbers of nursing staff in new content and procedures and maintaining fidelity to program standards. In preparation for statewide adoption of a hospital based univer ... Full text Link to item Cite

Effectiveness of a Statewide Abusive Head Trauma Prevention Program in North Carolina.

Journal Article JAMA Pediatr · December 2015 IMPORTANCE: Abusive head trauma (AHT) is a serious condition, with an incidence of approximately 30 cases per 100,000 person-years in the first year of life. OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of a statewide universal AHT prevention program. DESIGN, SE ... Full text Link to item Cite

Process evaluation of a statewide abusive head trauma prevention program.

Journal Article Eval Program Plann · December 2014 The current study used four dimensions of the RE-AIM framework (Reach, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance) to evaluate the implementation of a statewide abusive head trauma prevention program. Numerous methods, including telephone surveys, paper and ... Full text Link to item Cite

Implementation and randomized controlled trial evaluation of universal postnatal nurse home visiting.

Journal Article Am J Public Health · February 2014 OBJECTIVES: We evaluated whether a brief, universal, postnatal nurse home-visiting intervention can be implemented with high penetration and fidelity, prevent emergency health care services, and promote positive parenting by infant age 6 months. METHODS: D ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Predictors of treatment completion in a sample of youth who have experienced physical or sexual trauma.

Journal Article J Interpers Violence · January 2014 Despite significant advances in knowledge and availability of evidence-based models for child traumatic stress, many children simply do not complete treatment. There remain notable gaps in the services research literature about treatment completion among y ... Full text Link to item Cite

Implementation and dissemination of military informed and evidence-based interventions for community dwelling military families.

Journal Article Clin Child Fam Psychol Rev · December 2013 Community dwelling military families from the National Guard and Reserve contend with deployment-related stressors in relative isolation, living in communities where mental health providers may have little knowledge of military culture. When they are commu ... Full text Link to item Cite

Randomized controlled trial of universal postnatal nurse home visiting: impact on emergency care.

Journal Article Pediatrics · November 2013 BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Although nurse home visiting has proven efficacious with small samples, scaling up to community populations with diverse families has not yet proven effective. The Durham Connects program was developed in collaboration with commu ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Family risk as a predictor of initial engagement and follow-through in a universal nurse home visiting program to prevent child maltreatment.

Journal Article Child Abuse Negl · August 2013 OBJECTIVE: As nurse home visiting to prevent child maltreatment grows in popularity with both program administrators and legislators, it is important to understand engagement in such programs in order to improve their community-wide effects. This report ex ... Full text Link to item Cite

A comparative effectiveness review of parenting and trauma-focused interventions for children exposed to maltreatment.

Journal Article J Dev Behav Pediatr · June 2013 OBJECTIVE: To systematically review the comparative effectiveness evidence for interventions to ameliorate the negative sequelae of maltreatment exposure in children ages birth to 14 years. METHODS: We assessed the research on pharmacological and psychosoc ... Full text Link to item Cite

Toward Population Impact from Home Visiting.

Journal Article Zero Three · January 1, 2013 Although some home-visiting programs have proven effective with the families they serve, no program has yet demonstrated an impact at the population level. We describe the Durham Connects (DC) initiative, which aims to achieve population impact by coalesci ... Open Access Link to item Cite

A brief assessment of learning for orphaned and abandoned children in low and middle income countries.

Journal Article AIDS Behav · February 2012 Assessment of children's learning and performance in low and middle income countries has been critiqued as lacking a gold standard, an appropriate norm reference group, and demonstrated applicability of assessment tasks to the context. This study was desig ... Full text Link to item Cite

The emergence of spanking among a representative sample of children under 2 years of age in North Carolina

Journal Article Frontiers in Psychiatry · December 1, 2011 Spanking is common in the United States but less common in many European countries in which it has been outlawed. Being spanked has been associated with child abuse victimization, poor self-esteem, impaired parent-child relationships, and child and adult m ... Full text Cite

Multi-system responses in the context of child maltreatment and intimate partner violence.

Journal Article Child Abuse Negl · August 2010 Full text Link to item Cite

Children and HIV

Journal Article · April 1, 2010 The Yale Child Study Center, through its Program for HIV-Affected Children and Families, has developed a community-based approach to the mental health care of children and families beset by HIV/AIDS. This chapter explores the unique opportunities inherent ... Full text Cite

Designing and testing a shaken baby syndrome prevention program - the period of PURPLE crying: Keeping babies safe in North Carolina

Journal Article Social Marketing Quarterly · December 1, 2009 Each year infants die or are permanently disabled at the hands of their caregivers by abusive head trauma, more commonly known as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). Current medical research confirms the central role of infant crying in triggering shaking by careg ... Full text Cite

Out-of-home placement of children exposed to violence

Journal Article Children and Society · January 1, 2008 There is growing concern about the increasing number of children in the USA who are exposed to community violence and the need to remove some of them from their families. This study examines risk factors for out-of-home placement among a large pool of chil ... Full text Cite

Clinical epidemiology of urban violence: responding to children exposed to violence in ten communities.

Journal Article J Interpers Violence · November 2007 This study explores the clinical epidemiology of children's exposure to violence as addressed by a program in which mental health clinicians work with law-enforcement agents in 10 U.S. cities. Data were collected on all participants contacted by the Child ... Full text Link to item Cite

Predictors of children's involvement in parents' treatment among homeless veterans in community residential care.

Journal Article Psychiatr Serv · September 2005 This study identified the proportion of homeless veterans who are parents and described characteristics of homeless veterans whose children became involved in their treatment. Of the 9,444 veterans surveyed, 37.7 percent were parents of children younger th ... Full text Link to item Cite

SAFE Homes: is it worth the cost? An evaluation of a group home permanency planning program for children who first enter out-of-home care.

Journal Article Child Abuse Negl · June 2005 OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the SAFE Homes (SH) program, a short-term group care program for children between 3 and 12 years of age who enter care for the first time. The program aims to improve case outcomes by consolidating resources to facilitate assessment ... Full text Link to item Cite

Acute service delivery in a police-mental health program for children exposed to violence and trauma.

Journal Article Psychiatr Q · 2005 The Child Development Community Policing Program represents a national model of community-based collaboration between police and mental health professionals for violence-exposed and traumatized children. Administrative data from clinical records of a 24-ho ... Full text Link to item Cite

Influences on the Career Choice of Psychotherapists

Journal Article Professional Psychology Research and Practice · August 1, 1995 Motivations and experiences relevant to the career choices of 56 clinical psychologists practicing psychotherapy were assessed and compared with those from a sample of 53 social psychologists. Clinical psychologists were more likely than social psychologis ... Full text Cite