Debra Murphy, PhD

Debra A. Murphy, PhD, is a Professor Emerita on Faculty Recall with the Health Risk Reduction Projects within the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Program (ISAP). She graduated from Florida State University in 1987 with a PhD in Psychology. She has conducted HIV/AIDS behavioral research on children, adolescents, adults, and families over the past 26 years.  Overall, her work has been behavioral research in HIV/AIDS with children, adolescents, adults, and families.  Her primary areas of research are: (1) protective and risk factors among children and adolescents affected by maternal HIV/AIDS; (2) mental health among at-risk and HIV-positive adolescents; and (3) assessment of children and adolescents.  She conducted an NIMH-funded R01 to assess the impact of maternal HIV/AIDS on their children (in what became a 15-year longitudinal study, as she followed the families since the children were 5 – 11 until they were late adolescents/early adults, over 3 NIH-funded R01s).  Findings from that longitudinal observational study indicated a large number of mothers and children experience psychological distress and that these families need supportive intervention.  Overall, she has been the P.I. on nineteen federally funded or state funded grants, as well as a Co-Investigator on twenty-three federally funded projects.  She is an author on over 160 peer-reviewed papers.  Prior to coming to UCLA, she was the Associate Director for the Center for AIDS Intervention in Wisconsin, and Co-Investigator on a series of federal grants focused on outcome evaluations of HIV behavioral risk-reduction interventions.