Helen Milojevich

Helen Milojevich
Duke University | DU · Center for Child and Family Policy

Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Behavior; Specializations in Developmental Psychology and Quantitative Methods

About

40
Publications
5,683
Reads
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671
Citations
Introduction
Helen Milojevich is a Research Scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. Prior to joining Duke, Helen was an Assistant Professor at the Center of Child Abuse and Neglect in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Helen's research investigates primary and tertiary prevention of child maltreatment and evaluates evidence-based parenting programs to promote family well-being.
Additional affiliations
August 2019 - June 2020
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Position
  • Senior Researcher
June 2020 - May 2022
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
August 2016 - July 2019
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Position
  • PostDoc Position

Publications

Publications (40)
Research
Full-text available
The global population increases by an estimated 83 million people annually, with a projected peak of 11.2 billion by 2100. As the world’s population grows, several demographic shifts are occurring that significantly impact families. This report describes six major demographic trends: declining fertility, changing partnering patterns, reductions in...
Article
Full-text available
Home visiting programs are an evidence-based approach to reducing adversity exposure and promoting well-being in children experiencing high-risk factors. Despite decades of research demonstrating the benefits of these programs, barriers continue to impact enrollment, engagement, and retention over time. The present qualitative study explored home v...
Article
The present study describes the efforts of a home visiting (HV) continuous quality improvement learning collaborative aimed at increasing father engagement in HV and parenting. Local implementing agencies (n = 11) delivering 3 evidence-based HV models participated in the collaborative. Each agency developed and implemented 3 rapid-cycle Plan-Do-Stu...
Article
To 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. FC implementation data spanned from July 1, 2009, to August 31, 2021, in seven counties across the USA. Data encompassed nurse-led in-ho...
Article
Full-text available
Objective Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) minimizes recall burden and maximizes ecological validity and has emerged as a valuable tool to characterize individual differences, assess contextual associations, and document temporal associations. However, EMA has yet to be reliably utilized in young children, in part due to concerns about respond...
Article
Early adversity predicts increased risk for mental and physical health problems. As such, intervention efforts, such as home-based parenting programs, have been initiated with vulnerable families to reduce adversity exposure and promote child well-being. The present randomized clinical trial had a parallel design and 1:1 allocation ratio of SafeCar...
Article
Full-text available
The current study examined whether two variants of psychopathic traits (PT) were identifiable in high-risk youth who had not yet been identified as antisocial, some of whom had documented histories of maltreatment (N = 167, Mage = 14.84), and then whether the variants differed in levels of aggression and empathy. High-PT youth with low anxiety and...
Article
Full-text available
Integration into formal and informal peer groups is a key developmental task during early adolescence. As youth begin to place greater value on attaining acceptance and popularity among peers, social status among one’s peer group becomes an important marker of social functioning during this developmental period. Whereas much empirical research has...
Article
Full-text available
Background Although there is evidence that family violence increased in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, few studies have characterized longitudinal trends in family violence across the course of initial stay-at-home orders. Objective The purpose of the present study is to investigate patterns and predictors of family violence, such...
Article
Exposure to early adversity has been linked to variations in emotional functioning. To date, however, the precise nature of these variations has been difficult to pinpoint given widespread differences in the ways in which aspects of emotional functioning are defined and measured. Here, more consistent with models of emotional functioning in typical...
Article
Full-text available
Recent decades have seen an alarming increase in rates of suicide among young people, including children and adolescents (“youth”). Although child maltreatment constitutes a well-established risk factor for suicidal ideation in youth, few efforts have focused on identifying factors associated with maltreated youths’ increased risk for suicidal idea...
Article
Exposure to early life adversity (ELA) is associated with increased rates of psychopathology and poor physical health. The present study builds on foundational work by Megan Gunnar identifying how ELA results in poor long-term outcomes through alterations in the stress response system, leading to major disruptions in emotional and behavioral regula...
Article
Background: Research conducted with typically developing (TD) infants and children generally indicates that better habitual sleep and sleep after learning are related to enhanced memory. Less is known, however, about associations between sleep and recall memory in children with Down syndrome (DS). Aims: The present study was conducted to determi...
Article
Full-text available
According to an evolutionary perspective, early environmental unpredictability induces expectations in youth that their future is uncertain and increases their likelihood of engaging in opportunistic, impulsive, and aggressive behaviors. Although considerable evidence supports the links between environmental unpredictability and such behaviors, les...
Article
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Maltreatment increases risk for psychopathology in childhood and adulthood, thus identifying mechanisms that influence these associations is necessary for future prevention and intervention. Emotion dysregulation resulting from maltreatment is one potentially powerful mechanism explaining risk for psychopathology. This study tests a conceptual mode...
Article
Participation in social skills therapy (SST) facilitates cognitive functioning in children with developmental disabilities. The present pilot study examined whether participation in SST was associated with enhanced encoding and 1-month delayed recall in children with Down syndrome (DS). Children were presented with novel three-step event sequences...
Chapter
Infants and children with Down syndrome (DS) can look forward toward bright futures, as individuals with DS are living healthier, more productive lives than ever due to medical advances, opportunities for early and continued intervention, and inclusive education. Despite these advances, infants and children with DS experience challenges in specific...
Article
Given the association between child maltreatment and a host of negative behavioral consequences, there remains a need to continue to identify mechanisms underlying this association as a means of improving intervention efforts. The present study examined one potential mechanism, namely, disengagement coping. We asked 6- to 17-year-old maltreated (n...
Article
The present study took a developmental psychopathology approach to examine the longitudinal association between parents' emotional expressiveness and children's self-regulation. Data collection spanned from 2004 to 2008. Ninety-two physically abusive parents completed yearly assessments of their emotional expressiveness, as well as their children's...
Article
Full-text available
Parents are perhaps the most direct and profound influences on children’s development of emotional competence. For example, how and what emotions parents express in the family has implications for children’s ability to understand and regulate their emotions. What is less well understood is what potential environmental or contextual factors impact p...
Article
Child maltreatment leads to deleterious effects in virtually every developmental domain, including cognitive, psychological, and behavioral functioning. Although difficulties with coping have been identified as contributing to these effects, less attention has been paid to the precise nature of maltreated children's coping difficulties, particularl...
Article
When children are removed from their parents's custody because of substantiated maltreatment and placed in out-of-home placements, they may be placed separately from siblings, potentially leading to even higher levels of stress in children. This possibility emerges insofar as siblings serve as a source of support during the uncertain times that acc...
Article
Background: Although group differences have been found between children with Down syndrome (DS) and typically developing (TD) children when considering sleep problems and temperament independently, none of the research conducted to date has examined sleep-temperament associations in children with DS. The present research was conducted to determine...
Article
Full-text available
Whereas previous research has indicated that sleep problems tend to co-occur with increased mental health issues in university students, relatively little is known about relations between sleep quality and mental health in university students with generally healthy sleep habits. Understanding relations between sleep and mental health in individuals...
Data
The attached supplemental file includes the data analyzed in the present report. (SAV)
Chapter
Participating in legal proceedings can be highly distressing and potentially detrimental to children’s well-being, both immediately and over time. In this review, we discuss how children cope with such participation. We focus primarily on children’s experiences and coping when they witnessed or endured crimes and are subsequently involved in crimin...
Article
Full-text available
The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is commonly assessed using verbal report paradigms in adults, studying the development of this ability in preverbal infants and children proved challenging. Over the past 30 years, researchers have devel...
Chapter
Individuals with a history of trauma, particularly maltreatment, often have accurate memories for trauma-related events. This does not mean that trauma never adversely affects autobiographical memory performance; indeed, some individuals with a trauma history reveal deficits in their memory performance while others at times show memory advantages o...
Article
Despite evidence that parents’ attachment is associated with children's memory, less is known about the mechanisms underlying this association or the contexts in which the association is most meaningful. The present study examined whether parents’ attachment predicted children's memory for stories regarding attachment-related topics, whether the co...
Article
Background: Whereas research has indicated that children with Down syndrome (DS) imitate demonstrated actions over short delays, it is presently unknown whether children with DS recall information over lengthy delays at levels comparable with typically developing (TD) children matched on developmental age. Method: In the present research, 10 chi...
Article
Full-text available
Adult-provided supportive language facilitates memory for the past in preverbal and verbal children. Work conducted with 18-month-olds indicates that children benefit from supportive adult language when tested after a 4-week delay but not when tested immediately after sequence demonstration; moreover, findings reveal that supportive language provid...
Article
Full-text available
Sleep-temperament associations have not yet been examined among university students, despite awareness of the high incidence of sleep problems in this population. The present study was conducted (a) to examine whether sleep quality was associated with temperament among university-attending young adults and (b) to determine whether particular compon...
Article
Research concerning the relations between stress and children's memory has been primarily correlational and focused on memory volume and accuracy. In the current study, we experimentally manipulated 7- and 8-year-olds' and 12- to 14-year-olds' experienced stress during a to-be-remembered event to examine the effects of stress on the content of thei...
Article
Previous research suggests that sleep is related to cognitive functioning in infants and adults. In the present study, we examined whether individual differences in infant sleep habits over the seven days prior to elicited imitation testing were associated with variability in (a) the encoding of 2-step event sequences and (b) memory for the present...

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