The health benefits of marriage have been much commented on and are often misunderstood. The significance of the growing body of evidence establishing the connections is now becoming clearer. A new series of NHMRC publications address these issues in depth and are an invaluable and reliable resource for health researchers, healthcare professionals and health policy […]
A letter and bill recommendations to Senators Wyden and Isakson, from senior health care and family systems professionals (clinicians, researchers and educators) with special interest and expertise in chronic illness. See also this blog post by Matt Martin, PhD., LMFT, Theodora Ooms, MSW and Jana Staton, PhD. : A vehicle to promote couple and family-centered, integrated […]
Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) was a yearlong voluntary marriage education program to help strengthen couples' relationships. SHM had small sustained positive effects on marital quality more than a year after the program ended but did not achieve its objectives of leading more couples to stay together or improving children’s well-being. MDRC SHM Overview Link
This paper presents findings from in-depth interviews with 16 couples who participated in the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) program. Couples reported benefiting from SHM’s focus on communication and conflict management, but financial needs and lack of social supports placed stress on their relationships throughout their tenure in SHM. MDRC Overview Link
The Strengthening Families with Children Born Out-of-Wedlock project was jointly funded by ACF’s Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation and Office of Child Support Enforcement. Researchers conducting this study utilized research, information obtained from field observations, and expert consultation to develop a conceptual framework for the design and evaluation of interventions to improve the quality […]
The Supporting Healthy Marriage in Step-Families project: (1) summarized and synthesized the existing literature concerning the characteristics of stepfamilies, (2) catalogued and documented existing marriage support and education programs focused on step/blended families, and (3) developed a conceptual framework to help guide future programmatic and research agendas aimed at stabilizing and supporting step-families, with a […]
The Minnesota Couples on the Brink Project led by Bill Doherty has just released an online training course on Discernment Counseling. Discernment Counseling is a new way to work with mixed-agenda couples (one leaning out of the marriage, the other leaning in). It teaches marriage therapists and counselors a step-by-step protocol for offering couples a multi-session […]
The Ex-Prisoner Reentry Strategies Study, being conducted by The Urban Institute, will document the implementation of programs funded under the FY 2011 Community-Centered Responsible Fatherhood Ex-Prisoner Reentry Pilot Project grant announcement, the experiences of staff and participants, and lessons useful to others in the field. The researchers will also develop evaluation design recommendations for comprehensive […]
The Supporting Healthy Marriage project, being led by MDRC, is an impact and implementation evaluation of healthy marriage education and related services for lower-income married couples with children provided by eight programs across the country. The major study questions include: (1) What are the experiences, issues and challenges in designing, implementing and operating healthy marriage […]