7/06-7/08:  AMultilevel modeling of inpatient care: Comorbid youth@  R03 funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.  This project has three components related to applying multilevel models to inpatient care for youth with substance abuse, mental health problems and comorbidities.  The first component models length of stay using a Bayesian cross-classified model, taking into account the fact that individuals are not perfectly nested with facilities.  The second focuses on two measures of quality of care: receipt of timely follow-up services and probability of being readmitted soon after discharge.  Duration until readmission and follow-up service is modeled using a multi-state competing risk model.  The third uses Geographic Information Systems to incorporate county-level factors as well as distance to providers into the models.  (PI: Elizabeth Gifford)

5/06-4/07: Evaluating the North Carolina School Based Child and Family Support Team Initiative funded by the State of North Carolina.  Nurses and social workers have been placed in 101 schools across North Carolina in an effort to work with families and communities agencies to improve academic outcomes and reduce out of home placement.  The Center for Child and Family Policy is evaluating this effort.  (PI: Elizabeth Gifford)

8/05-6/06:  “Monitoring Substance Abuse in Durham County”.  The goal of this project is to establish a substance abuse surveillance system in Durham County.  Data sources include administrative data from law enforcement, hospitals and the state medical examiner (PI: Elizabeth Gifford) 

Gifford, E. and Foster, E.M. "Provider-level effects on length of stay for youth with mental health and substance abuse disorders" forthcoming in Medical Care.

Foster, E. Michael and Gifford, E. (2005).  "The transition to adulthood for youth leaving public systems: Challenges to policies and research".  On the frontier of adulthood: Theory, research and public policy .  Settersten, R.A.,  Furstenberg, F. and Rumbaut, R (Eds.). Chicago.  University of Chicago Press.

Gifford, E.J., Weech-Maldonado, R., & Short, P.F. (2005). Low-income children's preventive services use: Implications of Parents’ Medicaid Status. Health Care Financing Review, 26(4), 81-95.

Gifford, E., Dodge, K. and the Conduct Prevention Research Group “Neighborhood Effects in A High Risk Sample”, was presented at the Society for Prevention Research in San Antonio, Texas 2006.

Gifford, E., Reed, S. and Kevin A. Schulman "Comparison of Three Regression Approaches to Model Resource Use in Multinational Clinical Trials," was presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making in San Francisco, California 2005.