Karen A. Bonuck, Ph.D.May 1, 2015 - BRONX, NY - The Health Resources and Services Administration has awarded a grant of nearly $1
million to Dr. Karen Bonuck and Dr. Anne Murphy to evaluate a relationship-
based parent-child therapy aimed at reducing the potential for child maltreatment
among at-risk youngsters from infants through age 3. Dr. Murphy has used this
innovative treatment with promising results among more than 100 families during the
past five years; it seeks to build secure parent-child relationships in place of the
standard parents-only skills training often used to prevent maltreatment.
Through the rigorous trial that the Bonuck-Murphy team has designed, 100 at-risk Bronx
families will be randomly assigned to either the new modality or to parent-only
classes. A panel of child welfare policy and practice professionals will review their
findings to determine whether the therapy may be translated to other treatment
settings and geographic locales.
Dr. Bonuck is Professor of Family & Social Medicine and of Obstetrics & Gynecology
and Women’s Health. Dr. Murphy is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics.
