Research Publications

Mental health problems are, unfortunately, a common occurrence among youth who experience maltreatment. This study used an interdisciplinary approach to consider how demographic differences, justice involvement, type of treatment agency involved, and child welfare effectiveness impact mental health. The study analyzed Quality Services Review (QSR) data from 2,110 randomly sampled child welfare cases in a Midwestern state. Multinomial logistic regression was used to predict the likelihood of problem severity based upon agency involvement, team effectiveness, and intervention effectiveness.

An extensive body of work shows that parental monitoring reduces the likelihood of risky behaviors among youth, yet little attention has been given to the factors compelling parents to engage in monitoring behaviors. The current study examines the association between non-familial, adolescent relationships (i.e., school connectedness, community connectedness, and peer relationships) and parental monitoring. The data used come from the Mobile Youth Survey (MYS), and from 2006 and 2011, resulting in a longitudinal sample of 3,287 adolescents.

In this study, the authors aimed to examine the association of a range of blood lead levels on language skills assessed at 4, 6, 10 and 12 years of age using a prospective longitudinal design controlling for potential confounding variables including maternal vocabulary, caregiver’s psychological distress and symptomatology, child’s race and prenatal drug exposure.

Youth in the child welfare system are often at increased risk for suicide due to the numerous physical and psychological challenges they face. This study was a longitudinal assessment of the impact of suicide intervention training on staff's abilities to identify, assess, and intervene when working with these youth in a child welfare setting.

A retrospective descriptive study aiming to describe an emergency medical dispatchers’ abilities to correctly triage Acute Myocardial Infarctions (AMIs) into Advanced Life Support (ALS) response tiers.