Choi, C., & Mersky, J. P. (2025).
Research has reliably shown that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are highly prevalent and consequential, though scientific progress has been hindered by the frequent use of retrospective, cross-sectional study designs. This study aimed to estimate the period prevalence of ACEs in early-, mid-, and late-adolescence, and to compare cross sectional and longitudinal associations between ACEs and health-related outcomes in adolescence and early adulthood.
Publications
Cleek, E. A., Sheets, L. K., Mersky, J. P., Totka, J. P., & Haglund, K. L. (2025).
Health care professionals can protect children by identifying and reporting injuries concerning for child physical abuse, such as sentinel injuries. Citing knowledge and collaboration barriers, health care professionals sometimes fail to recognize sentinel injuries as concerning for abuse. Interprofessional education may be an ideal format to improve health care professional’s responses to sentinel injuries.
Mersky, J. P., Plummer Lee, C., Liu, X. (2025).
Extending research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), this study examined the occurrence, co-occurrence, and associated outcomes of adverse adult experiences (AAEs). We also explored subgroup differences in the effects of AAEs and responses to the Adult Experiences Survey, a seminal assessment of AAEs.
Shlafer, R., Mohammed, Z., Hasan, A., Reardon, E. E., Mersky, J. P., Davis, L., West, A., & Jackson, D. B. (2025).
Each year, millions of families with children in the United States (US) come into contact with the criminal legal system (CLS), the deleterious consequences of which are well documented. Early childhood family home visiting (FHV) is a two-generation strategy to support pregnant women and families with infants and young children, many of whom encounter the CLS.
Mersky, J. P., Bacalso, E., & Plummer Lee, C. (2025).
Mental health providers’ attitudes toward evidence-based practice are likely to influence what interventions they learn, implement, and sustain over time. A 36-item version of the Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale (EBPAS) was recently developed to assess provider attitudes in 12 domains. Research suggests the EBPAS-36 is a promising tool, though inconsistencies across studies signal the need to reexamine its validity and reliability along with the correlates of provider attitudes.
Janczewski, C. E., Mersky, J. P., & Kaiser, D. (2025).
Children in foster care often face significant adversity in adulthood, including a heightened risk of incarceration. Yet, it is uncertain whether adult incarceration rates differ between youth who age out of foster care, youth who are reunified with their families, and those adopted or placed with a legal guardian.
Mersky, J., Janczewski, C., & Hami, D. (2025). Perinatal home visiting is a popular strategy for promoting maternal and child health in the United States. Despite considerable research on home visiting programs, little is known about the extent to which they engage populations that are disproportionately affected by health inequalities and their social determinants.
Plummer Lee, C., Mersky, J. P., & Liu, X. (2024). Few studies have examined anger concerns among postpartum women despite their risk of mood dysregulation. This study examined the performance of the Dimensions of Anger Reactions-5 (DAR-5) scale, a brief screen for problematic anger, in a sample of 1,383 postpartum women in Wisconsin who received perinatal home visiting services.
Romain Dagenhardt, D., Sharif, S., Belasco, E., & Topitzes, J. (2024).
Although reentry programming has grown, little is known about the process of developing reentry programming that utilizes peer support. Peer support is commonly utilized along side evidence-based practices in other service delivery areas (e.g., mental health), and is increasingly used during reentry, yet little is known about whether this practice is effective at reducing recidivism. This study examines a Smart Reentry program in an urban, Midwestern city.
Berger, L., Topitzes, J. & Di Paolo, M. (2024).
Many social workers receive limited training in working with clients engaged in unhealthy substance use. As a result, national organizations and agencies such as the Council on Social Work Education and individual social work programs are beginning to address this need by incorporating training into higher education social work programs. The purpose of this study was to examine Master of Social Work (MSW) students’ adherence to a brief intervention protocol for unhealthy alcohol use.
Romain Dagenhardt, D., Richards, J.,* Liu, X.,* & Mersky, J. P. (2023).
Family Treatment Courts (FTCs) serve child welfare-involved parents with substance use issues who are working toward recovery and reunification with their children. Research has linked FTCs to successful outcomes such as treatment access and completion and family reunification, but there has been less attention to factors that hinder and facilitate program implementation and client engagement. Moreover, little is known about how the shift to virtual services during the COVID-19 pandemic impacted FTC programs and the families they serve.
Mersky, J., Lee, C. P., Liu, X., & Janczewski, C. (2023). Family Treatment Courts have been linked to promising effects on key child welfare outcomes, though few rigorous program evaluations have been conducted. This study employs a robust quasi-experimental design to evaluate effects associated with Family Treatment Court participation on child permanency and safety.
Mersky, J., Lee, C. & Hami, D. (2023). This study compared the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences across intersections of sexual orientation, gender, race/ethnicity, and economic status. Data collected between 1994 and 2018 from 12,519 participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health were analyzed in 2023 to generate adverse childhood experience prevalence estimates.
Janczewski, C. E., & Nitkowski, J. (2023). This study examines the prevalence of SM and MI among 929 CPS-involved caregivers during the early phases of CPS involvement and explores the extent to which family and CPS-case characteristics predict referral and service receipt.
Janczewski, C., Mersky, J., & Lee, C. P. (2023). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with negative outcomes over the life course and across generations, including domestic violence (DV) and child maltreatment. However, no studies have examined the connection between parents’ ACEs and their child’s risk of child protective services (CPS) involvement or possible mechanisms of transmission. In addition to describing the prevalence and correlates of CPS involvement, our primary aims are to test whether parental adversity in childhood is associated with CPS involvement and whether DV victimization mediates the ACE-CPS association.
Mersky, J. P., Plummer Lee, C., & Janczewski, C. E. (2023). Extending research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), this study aimed to investigate whether the prevalence of and outcomes associated with adverse adult experiences vary among racial and ethnic subgroups. Survey data were collected from 1566 low-income women in Wisconsin using the Adult Experiences Survey (AES). Ten major adult adversities were assessed.
Mersky, J. P., Plummer Lee, C., & Jackson, D. B. (2023). This study explored whether patterns of lifetime adversity are associated with sleep disturbance and tested whether adult adversity mediates the relationship between childhood adversity and sleep.
Gómez, A. Mersky, J. P., Plummer Lee, C., Zhang, L., Shlafer, R. J., & Jackson, D. B. (2023). A growing body of research reveals a connection between maternal incarceration and various child development outcomes. Even so, little is known about how the timing of maternal incarceration may shape the social–emotional development of young children and the role of maternal mental health in mediating this association. Using a sample of 1097 mothers (18–52 years old, 47.6% white) and children (aged 12–48 months) receiving home visiting services in Wisconsin, this study examined the intergenerational effect of incarceration before a child’s birth on child social–emotional development, and whether this association was mediated by maternal mental health.
Mersky, J. P., Jeffers, N. K., Plummer Lee, C., Shlafer, R. A., Jackson, D. B, & Gómez, A. (2023). Racial and ethnic disparities in birth outcomes have persisted in the United States for decades, though the causes remain poorly understood. The life course perspective posits that poorer outcomes of Black birthing people stem from heightened exposure to stressors early in life and cumulative exposure to stressors over time. Despite its prominence, this perspective has seldom been investigated empirically. We analyzed longitudinal data gathered from 1319 women in low-income households in Wisconsin who received perinatal home visiting services.
Chopp, S., Topitzes, J., & Mersky, J. P. (2023). Research on the effectiveness of Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) Programs has revealed that VR services are less effective for trauma-affected and Black consumers. For instance, consumers with trauma exposure disengage from services earlier than their non-traumatized counterparts, and Black consumers benefit less from each phase of VR services compared to others. One midwestern state’s VR program sought to address these disparities by offering trauma-informed and trauma-responsive services that emphasize cultural responsiveness, racial equity, and strengths-based practices.
Mersky, J. P., Choi, C., Langlieb, J., Plummer Lee, C., & Chang, P. (2022). Home visiting programs often provide long-term services to at-risk populations, though briefer, universal interventions like Family Connects are increasingly being disseminated to bring home visiting to scale. Extending research by the model’s developers in North Carolina, this paper presents findings from the first independent implementation study of Family Connects.
Topitzes, J., Bacalso, E., Plummer-Lee, C. T., Jonas-Gordon, S., & Mersky, J. P. (2022). The current study tested a trauma screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (T-SBIRT) interview protocol as implemented within Temporary Assistance to Needy Families programming. Using a non-experimental process evaluation and quasi-experimental outcome evaluation (N = 88), the study assessed four research questions. First, do T-SBIRT providers reach model adherence rates above 90%? Second, do over 90% of T-SBIRT completers experience the intervention as tolerable? Third, is T-SBIRT completion associated with decreases in mental health symptoms? Fourth, is T-SBIRT completion linked to reductions in positive mental health screenings?
Mersky, J. P., Plummer Lee, C., & Janczewski, C. E. (2022). Extending research on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), this study aimed to investigate whether the prevalence of and outcomes associated with adverse adult experiences vary among racial and ethnic subgroups. Survey data were collected from 1566 low-income women in Wisconsin using the Adult Experiences Survey (AES). Ten major adult adversities were assessed, including items that reference an intimate partner or household member (e.g., physical or emotional abuse, substance use) along with other social and economic stressors such as homelessness and discrimination.
Zhang, L., & Topitzes, J. (2022). A body of emerging research has indicated that adverse family physical environment is related to parenting problems such as parent-child conflict, decreased caregiver sensitivity, and less parental emotional availability. Yet, no study has examined if family physical environment is also associated with child abuse and neglect. This study aimed to examine the relationships between family physical environment and different types of child maltreatment.
Goldstein, E., Topitzes, J., Brown, R. L., & Jussel, A. B. (2022). Previous studies indicated that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has harmed the mental health of diverse samples. Adopting a trauma lens with a sample of university faculty and staff, this study examined risk conferred by previous exposure to traumatic life events (TLE) on pandemic-related mental health harm (MHH) and stress and the mediating influence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.
Mersky, J. P., Choi, C., & Plummer Lee, C. (2022). Family Connects (FC) is a postnatal nurse home visiting program that has scale-up potential because it is brief, inexpensive, and universal. Three investigations have linked Family Connects to improved maternal and family outcomes, but no independent impact studies have been conducted to date. This study investigates a FC program in Racine County, WI that was implemented by a multimunicipal health department in partnership with a local hospital.
Mersky, J. P., Janczewski, C. E., Plummer Lee, C., & Yasin, T. (2022). Four decades of home visiting research has yet to reveal clear implications regarding the amount and type of services required to produce intended outcomes like reduced parenting stress. This study compared the effects of two home visiting programs on parenting stress and examined whether depressive symptoms and social support were associated with stress levels and differential program effects.
Zhang, L., Mersky, J. P., Gruber, A. M., & Kim, J. Y. (2022). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are among the leading environmental causes of morbidity and mortality. Extending research on within-generation effects, more recent scholarship has explored between-generation consequences of ACEs. Despite growing interest in the intergenerational effects of parents’ ACEs on children’s outcomes, this line of scholarship has yet to be coalesced into a comprehensive review. The current study is a scoping review on the intergenerational transmission of parental ACEs and children’s outcomes.
Cleek, E. A., Totka, J. P., Sheets, L. K., Mersky, J. P., Haglund, K. L. (2022). Sentinel injuries (SIs) are some of the earliest and most readily identifiable red flags of child abuse. SIs are unexpected bruising or intra-oral injuries in premobile infants and highly correlated with child abuse. However, SIs are not always recognized and reported as red flags of child abuse. Infants are left at risk for continued harm when SIs are not identified and reported. Although increasing nurses’ knowledge of SIs is important, child abuse researchers and behavioral theorists have identified that knowledge alone does not predict nurses’ behaviors when identifying and reporting suspected child abuse.
Janczewski, C. E. & Mersky, J. P. (2022). This study examined the reliability and factor structure of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS) and the prevalence and correlates of secondary traumatic stress (STS) among home visitors.
Choi, C., Mersky, J. P., Janczewski, C. E., & Goyal, D. (2022). The current study aimed to describe and predict perinatal depression trajectories in a sample of low-income women from the first trimester of pregnancy to six months postpartum. The study sample consisted of 899 women in Wisconsin who received home visiting services. Eligible participants were screened for depressive symptoms by home visitors using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale at least three times across four time periods from the first trimester of pregnancy to six months postpartum.
Zhang, L., Mersky, J. P., & Plummer Lee, C. (2022). Despite the persistent hypothesis that adverse childhood experiences (ACE) have intergenerational implications, empirical research documenting the effects and the mechanisms of transmission remains underdeveloped. This study examined the intergenerational effects of mothers’ adverse childhood experiences on their offspring’s social-emotional development and whether the association was mediated by mothers’ mental health, adult adversity, and perceptions of paternal involvement.
Mersky, J. P., McKelvey, L. M., Janczewski, C. E., & Fitzgerald, S. (2021). Effects of COVID-19 on home visiting services for vulnerable families: A multi-state analysis of enrollment, engagement, and …
Mersky, J. P., Topitzes, J., Langlieb, J., & Dodge, K. A. (2021). This article presents a conceptual argument, backed by empirical evidence, that population health can be improved by implementing trauma-responsive practices, and that greater mental health equity can be achieved if these strategies are used to engage underserved clients.
Romain Dagenhardt, D., Mersky, J.P., Topitzes, J., Schubert, E., & Krushas, A. (2021). There is a growing interest in developing comprehensive assessments that measure intimate partner violence (IPV) alongside other adverse events that correlate with IPV and compound its effects. One promising line of research in this area has focused on the impact of exposure to multiple types of victimization, i.e., polyvictimization. The purpose of this study is to examine the experience of administration of a polyvictimization tool from staff and client perspectives in order to inform future tool developments and assessment procedures.
Janczewski, C. E., Mersky, J. P., & Plummer Lee, C. (2021). Organizational characteristics are important predictors of workplace outcomes, but the length and complexity of validated instruments restrict their use in research and practice. This study tested a brief Measure of Work Environment (MWE) using data from 718 child welfare and 349 home visiting professionals.
Mersky, J. P., Choi, C., Plummer Lee, C, & Janczewski, C. E. (2021). Disparities in adverse childhood experiences by race/ethnicity, gender, and economic status: Intersectional analysis of a nationally representative …
Mueller, D., Bacalso, E., Ortega‐Williams, A., Pate Jr, D. J., & Topitzes, J. (2021). Journal of Community Psychology.
Residents of urban American neighborhoods facing economic hardship often experience individual and collective adversities at high levels. This study explores how racially diverse adults experience stress, adversity, and trauma, and how they cope and heal in the context of their environment.
Gilbert, R., Mersky, J. P., & Plummer Lee, C. (2021). Preventive Medicine Reports.
The US is facing a rise in vaccine hesitancy, delay, and refusal, though little is known about these outcomes in socio-economically disadvantaged populations. This study examines the prevalence and correlates of vaccine attitudes and behaviors in a diverse cohort of low-income mothers receiving home visiting services.
Mersky, J. P., Plummer Lee, C., & Janczewski, C. E. (2020). Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
The current investigation is a validation study of the Adult Experiences Survey, a seminal assessment of adverse adult experiences. Data were collected between July 2015 and June 2019 from a sample of 1,747 low-income women as part of a longitudinal study in Wisconsin, United States. Analyses of 10 adversities were conducted to assess item prevalence and internal consistency in the full sample and test-retest reliability in a subsample of 90 participants.