Chapin Hall

Dr. Angeline Spain is a Senior Researcher at Chapin Hall. Spain’s research focuses on knowledge use to improve the well-being of vulnerable children and their families. Broadly conceptualized, children do better when they have responsive, nurturing relationships with adults; these relationships help promote children’s healthy brain development and buffer stress associated with challenging circumstances. Because children’s health and development are intertwined, she centers her expertise on family engagement and initiatives to increase families’ initial access to and longer-term participation in interventions and services to support children’s health and school readiness. Her work aims to bolster the capacity of state and local agencies to build family and community assets on the way to resilience. A cornerstone of her approach is the use of rigorous and codesigned approaches that are rapid cycle and actionable by communities. She employs mixed methods to investigate these areas, leveraging expertise in comparative case studies, survey design, and continuous improvement methods.

At Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Spain conducts and collaborates on research in education, early childhood, and health care settings. Recent projects include: cross-systems alignment to elevate family assets during COVID-19; innovations in pediatric primary care to prevent and mitigate toxic stress for families with young children; a community-wide partnership to strengthen the kindergarten transitions of children and families; and an ambitious effort to transform local public library branches into community hubs in underserved urban neighborhoods. She also has contributed to research studies and technical assistance projects that investigate data systems and data use in diverse settings—including early childhood, afterschool, and cross-sector collaboration—to promote child and family health, safety, and resilience.

Before her current position at Chapin Hall, Spain was Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Education. There, she led and collaborated in work on the implementation of systems change efforts, seeking to understand how community capacity shaped the implementation of instructional, talent management, and school funding reforms. She also coled a curricular redesign that integrated the use of data and inquiry cycles throughout the coursework and clinical experiences of aspiring educational leaders. These experiences in education galvanized her research interests in opportunities to bridge the silos within and between our public systems, as well the importance of community context to systems change.