Chapin Hall

Doris Duke Foundation Awards Chapin Hall Grant to Support Transformative Leaders

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has named Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago one of five inaugural recipients of the Child Well-being Leadership Development grants. These grants support programs that help racially and ethnically diverse mid- and senior-level researchers, policymakers and practitioners become transformative leaders who can make sustained improvements in the well-being of vulnerable children and families in the United States.

Chapin Hall was awarded a grant of $700,000 over two years to strengthen the Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-being. The funds will be used to strengthen the fellowships network, and to provide research-to-action grants to teams of fellows and policy and practice partners who will use research to improve outcomes.

“Effective and diverse social sector leadership is critical for ending intergenerational cycles of poverty and persistently inequitable outcomes for families and children,” said Lola Adedokun, program director for child well-being at Doris Duke. “We are excited to support a new set of leaders as they innovate and implement approaches to tackling the complex, systemic issues that unduly burden U.S. communities contending with vast health and economic disparities.”

Grants were also given to Foster America for their fellowship program; the NDN Collective to focus on Native leaders in the U.S., Canada and Mexico; the National Black Child Development Institute to increase the number of African Americans in executive-level roles; and Ascend at the Aspen Institute, to support care programming for their fellowship program focused on economic and social mobility.

Dr. Deborah Daro developed and chairs the Doris Duke Fellowships. A senior research fellow at Chapin Hall, Daro is one of the nation’s leading experts in child abuse prevention policy. She oversees the network of Doris Duke fellows, who are all leaders in child well-being and prevention research, who span the country and represent an array of disciplines and research interests.

Lee Ann Huang, a researcher at Chapin Hall focusing on child abuse and neglect prevention, manages the fellowship program. The internal evaluation of the fellowships is directed by Tiffany Burkhardt, a Chapin Hall senior researcher whose work focuses on promoting child and family well-being and preventing child maltreatment.