Robert Murphy, PhD, has served as the Executive Director of the Center for Child & Family Health since 2004, a three-university and community collaboration focused on best practices in prevention and treatment of maltreatment and child traumatic stress. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Public Health, and a faculty fellow at the Center for Child & Family Policy at theDuke Sanford School of Public Policy. A clinical psychologist with a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, he completed training and joined the faculty of the Yale Child Study Center, directing evaluation for the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence.
Dr. Murphy is one of the developers of Family Connects, a brief, universal, postnatal home-visiting program designed to promote child wellbeing and prevent maltreatment. Family Connects is disseminated in more than 20 states or communities nationally. Dr. Murphy has been an investigator for two longitudinal randomized controlled trials of Family Connects that have demonstrated sustained improvement in infant, family, maltreatment, and health service utilization outcomes. He leads other efforts related to workforce expertise and intervention for children in out-of-home care in the child welfare system, as well as research on the effectiveness of evidence-based interventions for child traumatic stress.
Areas of Focus: Development and study of a universal, evidence-based program to promote child wellbeing and prevent maltreatment, Implementation and Dissemination of Evidence-Based Interventions, Child Trauma Workforce Development, Military Families