Dr. Murphy has three decades of education and experience in behavioral health and educational research/evaluation, services, and support. She has held positions in academic institutions, community-based and private sector organizations. Dr. Murphy’s holds a doctorate in behavioral health and master’s in education. Her principal experience is substance use, mental health and related infectious diseases for culturally diverse children, youth, and families in various settings. As a teen, Dr. Murphy struggled with substance use and mental health issues and participated in treatment. This experience provided the foundation for her academic and professional direction.    

Implementation Science. Dr. Murphy began her career by providing services to adolescents involved with the juvenile justice system. This led to various projects implementing evidence-based services for adolescents and their families, transitional-aged youth, and pregnant, parenting, and childless women. Previously, she was the director of adolescent services and research and was responsible for intervention evaluation projects. These included trauma-focused recovery-oriented systems of care, evidence-based treatment, recovery supports, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevention, testing, and counseling projects. She led the day-to-day implementation of a multi-site screening, brief intervention, referral to treatment (SBIRT) project for juvenile justice involved youth and their caregivers. More recently, she coordinated a randomized controlled trial testing the efficacy of an online training for parents who have children with or suspected of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. 

Supporting the Public Health Workforce. Dr. Murphy has provided or directed professional continuing education, training, and technical assistance activities in a variety of settings for professionals across the U.S. Today, she is managing a project designed to match experienced medication assisted treatment (MAT) providers with less experienced MAT providers to increase capacity for treating people with opioid use disorders. She is the PI for the Overdose Data to Action project where she led the development and implementation of Opioid Stewardship Program strategies which resulted in a career development award. Dr. Murphy oversees the overdose recognition and naloxone administration training for community health workers and other professional training activities.  She is the chair for the Interprofessional Education and Practice on the topic of opioids. 

Teaching and Service. Dr. Murphy is the instructor for the undergraduate course Drugs and Society.  Dr. Murphy is a member of the Hepatitis C Elimination Advisory Group. This group aims to influence policy changes to reduce barriers to care and support community level harm reduction efforts.  

Research Synopsis 

Link to PubMed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1f5q0XJnippMnz/bibliography/public/ 

Link to ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4536-0758 

Research Interests 

• Substance use prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery 

• Mental health issues of trauma, attention deficient hyperactivity disorder 

• Sexual health and infectious diseases related to substance use 

• Intervention and implementation science 

• Behavioral health workforce development