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Michael Hurlburt

Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs

Focuses on behavioral health interventions for improving the relationships and emotional health of children and families.

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Michael Hurlburt
Phone:  213.740.4804
Rank:  Tenure Track Faculty

Michael Hurlburt

Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs

Focuses on behavioral health interventions for improving the relationships and emotional health of children and families.

Media Contact

Biography

Michael Hurlburt is associate dean for faculty affairs, and an associate professor. His career is devoted to scholarship that advances research and conceptually guided strategies for improving the reach and impact of behavioral health interventions designed to improve the relationships and emotional health of children and families, with an emphasis on maltreatment prevention. With support from grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, his initial work in clinical epidemiology helped to provide a uniquely detailed understanding of services that families receive in mental health and child welfare settings. That work moved the dialogue about empirically supported interventions beyond a focus only on the use of specific, fully-packaged intervention models and into a space where it is possible to communicate about common elements (content and techniques) of such programs and the degree to which existing services match such elements.

Hurlburt currently conducts research examining processes for implementing practice innovations in mental health and child welfare settings and has written theoretical articles that provide a framework for understanding forces that influence dissemination, implementation and sustainment of practice innovations.

He reviews for more than a dozen leading journals in social work, psychology, psychiatry, pediatrics and health services research, and regularly serves as an expert for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and national scientific organizations in Europe. Hurlburt served as board member and treasurer for the Group for Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE) from 2018-2022. He also was recognized for outstanding graduate mentorship by USC, and selected as Public Citizen of the Year in 2012 by the California Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers for his research, service and mentorship of students and other faculty.

To reference the work of Michael Hurlburt online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "Michael Hurlburt, faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)

Education

University of California, San Diego

PhD 1997

University of California, San Diego

MA 1993

University of California, Santa Barbara

BA 1990

Area of Expertise

  • Emotional Health
  • Children & Families
  • Social Work
  • Social Work Education
  • Behavioral Interventions

Industry Experience

  • Health and Wellness
  • Research
  • Education/Learning
  • Social Services

Research Interest

Children & Families Organization/Workplace

Accomplishments

State Public Citizen of the Year Award, National Association of Social Workers - California Chapter
2012
Public Citizen of the Year Award, National Association of Social Workers - San Diego and Imperial Counties Chapter
2012

Articles & Publications

Advancing a Conceptual Model of Evidence-Based Practice Implementation in Public Service Sectors | Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research

Aarons, G. A., Hurlburt, M., & Horwitz, S. M.
2011 Implementation science is a quickly growing discipline. Lessons learned from business and medical settings are being applied but it is unclear how well they translate to settings with different historical origins and customs (e.g., public mental health, social service, alcohol/drug sectors). The purpose of this paper is to propose a multi-level, four phase model of the implementation process (i.e., Exploration, Adoption/Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment), derived from extant literature, and apply it to public sector services...

 

Mixed Method Designs in Implementation Research | Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research

Palinkas, Lawrence A., Gregory A. Aarons, Sarah Horwitz, Patricia Chamberlain, Michael Hurlburt, and John Landsverk
2010 This paper describes the application of mixed method designs in implementation research in 22 mental health services research studies published in peer-reviewed journals over the last 5 years. Our analyses revealed 7 different structural arrangements of qualitative and quantitative methods, 5 different functions of mixed methods, and 3 different ways of linking quantitative and qualitative data together. Complexity of design was associated with number of aims or objectives, study context, and phase of implementation examined...

 

Mental Health Care for Children With Disruptive Behavior Problems: A View Inside Therapists' Offices | Psychiatric Services

Garland, Ann F., Lauren Brookman-Frazee, Michael S. Hurlburt, Erin C. Accurso, Rachel J. Zoffness, Rachel Haine-Schlagel, and William Ganger
2010 More money is spent on treatment for mental illness among children in the United States than for any other childhood medical condition ( 1 ). Unfortunately, outcome data on the effectiveness of community-based psychotherapeutic care are discouraging ( 2 , 3 , 4 ), and virtually nothing is known about what types of psychotherapeutic care are delivered in usual care settings, making it difficult to know how to target care improvement ( 5 , 6 , 7 ). National research and policy initiatives call for dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices in usual care ( 8 )...