MARK CHAFFIN CENTERS FOR HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT
The Mark Chaffin Centers for Healthy Development are focused on preventing and addressing child maltreatment, building social-emotional competencies and promoting meaningful inclusion and quality of life for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Dr. Baggett is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health and Director of the Mark Chaffin Centers for Healthy Development. Dr. Baggett’s research is focused on increasing the deployment of effective interventions for promoting caregiver emotional well-being and engagement in interactions that promote pivotal social-emotional and communication competencies of very young children, particularly at the intersections of mental health and disability.
The centers work to foster social ecologies that promote healthy development and well-being through positive developmental and behavioral supports at home and across multiple community-based systems of care. Researchers at the Mark Chaffin Centers develop and study real-world implementation of evidence-based practices that optimize public health by:
- Promoting safety and social-emotional competency development, beginning in infancy through the transition to adulthood and parenting
- Building the capacity and practices of parents, caregivers, family members, educators and diverse discipline providers to promote health, safety and social-emotional competencies
- Reducing disparities by improving access to evidence-based practices
- Improving access to and facility with systems of care data
- Enhancing systemic workforce capacities to promote health, development, social-emotional well-being, meaningful inclusion and quality of life
- Capitalizing on early life development and learning to optimize lifelong health outcomes
The Mark Chaffin Centers for Healthy Development are home to the Center for Leadership in Disability, the National SafeCare® Training and Research Center, Prevent Child Abuse Georgia, the National Center on Child Trafficking, and the National Center for Sexual Violence Prevention.