This Black History Month, OPRE is excited to introduce the new National African American Child and Family Research Center at the Morehouse School of Medicine. This Center, funded by a five-year grant from OPRE, will provide national leadership and excellence in community-engaged research to better serve African American children and families. The Center is funded to focus broadly on topics related to child development (Early Head Start and Head Start), childcare assistance, social and economic mobility (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and healthy relationships, including fatherhood and supportive family relationships.
The goals of the Center are to:
- Advance a community-engaged and high-caliber research program focused on African American children and families
- Build research capacity and infrastructure to conduct research relevant to ACF program and policy goals
- Effectively communicate research via a comprehensive dissemination strategy
OPRE has been working to incorporate a holistic race equity perspective into our work, in line with recent updates to the ACF Evaluation Policy, and this Center is part of a comprehensive effort to understand the experiences of people in the populations ACF serves. The African American population, like other racial and ethnic populations in the US, is very diverse, and this Center will allow space for scholars, students, and practitioners to learn and share more about the varied experiences and strengths of this population. For example, The Center’s research and capacity-building plans include a focus on both urban and rural African American populations.
This Center joins OPRE's Tribal Research Center and National Center for Hispanic Children and Families as important hubs for learning from and with the diverse populations ACF programs serve. As the project officer for the center, I am looking forward to working with the Morehouse team, led by Dr. Latrice Rollins, as the Center gets started up and their research, capacity building, and communication activities get underway. Dr. Rollins and her team have hit the ground running, with an emerging scholar program, a pilot project program, and a virtual national conference all planned for this year.
Megan Reid is a Social Science Research Analyst whose work focuses on employment interventions, healthy marriage and relationship education programs, responsible fatherhood programs, child support, race equity, and family economic stability.