Now accepting nominations for the 2025 Mark Chaffin Award.
This award will be presented at the in-person Georgia Child Abuse Conference: from Prevention to Intervention on Wednesday, September 10, 2025 at the Hilton Peachtree Center Conference Center and is sponsored by PCA Georgia, the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy and the Stephanie V. Blank Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
This award is given in honor of the life and legacy of Dr. Mark Chaffin. Dr. Chaffin was a leader in the field of child maltreatment research. His main areas of research focused on child abuse and neglect and delinquency intervention and service systems, particularly the development and implementation of evidence-based prevention and treatment approaches within public sector service systems. He dedicated his career to helping at-risk children and families with a sense of fundamental ethics and the need to do the right thing.
This award recognizes an individual who has made repeated, significant, and outstanding contributions and commitment to the prevention of child abuse and neglect in Georgia as demonstrated by:
- Consistent involvement and strong leadership in child abuse prevention for two or more years
- Recognition by colleagues and peers as an informed, passionate prevention leader
- Advocacy for and/or participation in prevention strategies at the individual, community, or societal level that have the greatest potential to assure that children and families have safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments
- Application of the best available research and knowledge in their work and/or contributions to research over the course of their career
- The ability to motivate and bring together multiple individuals, groups, sectors in support of prevention strategies, policies, and practices with data-supported results
- Has assisted in securing funding efforts or brought together multiple funding sources that support activities with positive, data-supported results
Nomination Form Due Friday, July 25, 2025.
If selected, award recipients and nominators will be contacted by the Georgia Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect planning team by August 15, 2025.