Scholars@Duke
Yu Bai

Yu Bai

Statistician III
Center for Child and Family Policy
yu.bai@duke.edu
Box 90539, Durham, NC 27708
213 Sanford Building, Box 90539, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Harsh Parenting, Maternal Depression, and Executive Function in Early Childhood.

Journal Article Child: care, health and development · November 2025 BackgroundExecutive function (EF), a multimodal construct that captures one's control over cognition and behaviour, is associated with academic achievement and social-emotional competence. Prior research suggests that early childhood experiences a ... Full text Cite

Promoting Long-Term Parent and Caregiver Mental Health Through Universal Postnatal Nurse Home Visiting: Intervention Effects and Mechanisms of Action.

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

Unique Profiles of Postpartum Family Needs and Evidence of Racial and Ethnic Disparities: Insights from Community Implementation of Family Connects.

Journal Article Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · June 2025 ObjectivesTo delineate specific family needs during the postpartum period using data from Family Connects (FC), a universal home-visiting initiative, and to scrutinize potential racial and ethnic disparities in these needs.MethodFC implem ... Full text Open Access Cite

Intracranial hemorrhage and additional anomalies detected on prenatal magnetic resonance imaging: A large, retrospective study in two tertiary medical institutions.

Journal Article Heliyon · December 2024 ObjectivesTo clarify the prenatal magnetic resonance (MR) imaging characteristics of fetal intracranial haemorrhages (ICHs) in a large cohort and correlate them with birth outcomes.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed MR images of fetuses w ... Full text Cite

Birth Spacing and Child Maltreatment: Population-Level Estimates for North Carolina.

Journal Article Child maltreatment · November 2024 We examine population-level associations between birth spacing and child maltreatment using birth records and child welfare records for 1,099,230 second or higher parity children born in North Carolina between 1997 and 2013. Building upon previous research ... Full text Open Access Cite

Subtypes of Childhood Social Withdrawal and Adult Relationship and Parenting Outcomes.

Journal Article International journal of behavioral development · October 2024 The aims of the current 30-year prospective study were to determine: 1) whether socially withdrawn kindergarten children are less likely than others to enter serious romantic relationships or become parents by age 34, 2) whether socially withdrawn children ... Full text Open Access 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

Understanding Heterogeneity in the Impact of Public Preschool Programs.

Journal Article Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development · June 2023 We examine the North Carolina Pre-K (NC Pre-K) program to test the hypothesis that observed variation in effects resulting from exposure to the program can be attributed to interactions with other environmental factors that occur before, during, or after t ... Full text Open Access Cite

Impact of a universal perinatal home-visiting program on reduction in race disparities in maternal and child health: Two randomised controlled trials and a field quasi-experiment.

Journal Article Lancet Reg Health Am · November 2022 BACKGROUND: Public health interventions must become accountable for reduction of race disparities, particularly among Black, Hispanic, and Non-Hispanic White families in the United States. Family Connects (FC) is a universal perinatal home-visiting program ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

A defensive mindset: A pattern of social information processing that develops early and predicts life course outcomes.

Journal Article Child development · July 2022 The hypothesis was tested that some children develop a defensive mindset that subsumes individual social information processing (SIP) steps, grows from early experiences, and guides long-term outcomes. In Study 1 (Fast Track [FT]), 463 age-5 children (45% ... Full text Open Access 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

Transitioning to virtual interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic: Impact on the family connects postpartum home visiting program activity.

Journal Article Infant Ment Health J · January 2022 In this paper, we analyze program activity for Family Connects (FC), an evidence-based postpartum home-visiting intervention, during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic began, FC transitioned to a virtual protocol which maintains key psychosocial comp ... 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

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on substance use among adults without children, parents, and adolescents.

Journal Article Addict Behav Rep · December 2021 Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on alcohol and illicit substance use among adults without children, parents, and adolescents was investigated through two studies with five samples from independent ongoing U.S. longitudinal studies. In Study 1, 931 adults w ... Full text Open Access 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

Brief Report: Classifying Rates of Students with Autism and Intellectual Disability in North Carolina: Roles of Race and Economic Disadvantage.

Journal Article J Autism Dev Disord · January 2021 We examined special education classifications among students aged 3-21 in North Carolina public schools, highlighting autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID). Results revealed variability by county in ASD and ID prevalence, and in c ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Long-term effects of early childhood programs through eighth grade: Do the effects fade out or grow?

Journal Article Children and youth services review · May 2020 Support for policies to improve early childhood educational development and reduce disparities grew rapidly this century but recently has wavered because of findings that program effects might fade out prematurely. Two programs implemented at scale in Nort ... Full text Open Access Cite

Gender Differences in the Impact of North Carolina’s Early Care and Education Initiatives on Student Outcomes in Elementary School

Journal Article Educational Policy · March 1, 2020 Based on growing evidence of the long-term benefits of enriched early childhood experiences, we evaluate the potential for addressing gender disparities in elementary school through early care and education programs. Specifically, we explore the community- ... Full text Open Access 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

Magnetic resonance imaging radiomics in categorizing ovarian masses and predicting clinical outcome: a preliminary study.

Journal Article European radiology · July 2019 PurposeTo evaluate the ability of MRI radiomics to categorize ovarian masses and to determine the association between MRI radiomics and survival among ovarian epithelial cancer (OEC) patients.MethodA total of 286 patients with pathologica ... Full text Cite

Magnetic resonance imaging in categorization of ovarian epithelial cancer and survival analysis with focus on apparent diffusion coefficient value: correlation with Ki-67 expression and serum cancer antigen-125 level.

Journal Article Journal of ovarian research · June 2019 BackgroundTo determine whether magnetic resonance (MR) imaging features combined with apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values could be used as a tool for categorizing ovarian epithelial cancer (OEC) and predicting survival, as well as correlat ... Full text Cite

Is implementation fidelity associated with improved access to care in a school-based Child and Family Team model?

Journal Article Evaluation and program planning · April 2015 Effective child and family centered service planning is crucial to addressing vulnerable children's needs. However, there is limited evidence about what facets of these processes improve service use and outcomes. The current study used a Poisson random eff ... Full text Open Access Cite

A Network Perspective on Dropout Prevention in Two Cities

Journal Article Educational Administration Quarterly · February 8, 2015 Purpose: This exploratory case study examines how school systems and other local organizations have been working within two major U.S. cities to improve high school graduation rates. Systematically assessing active interorganizational dropout prevention ne ... Full text Open Access Cite

Racial/ethnic disparities in symptom severity among children hospitalized with asthma.

Journal Article Journal of health care for the poor and underserved · February 2007 Asthma is the most common chronic illness among U.S. children as well as a leading cause of hospitalization and functional disability. This cross-sectional study uses 2001 hospitalization data for Pennsylvania to examine disparities among Black, Hispanic, ... Full text Open Access Cite

Race/ethnic disparities in symptom severity among children hospitalized with asthma

Journal Article Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved · 2007 Open Access Cite

Communication and education about asthma in rural and urban schools.

Journal Article Ambulatory pediatrics : the official journal of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association · July 2006 ObjectiveTo assess the quality of communication and education about asthma in Pennsylvania public schools.MethodsSurvey of a stratified random sample of school nurses in rural and urban Pennsylvania public schools (n = 996) concerning com ... Full text Open Access Cite