Dorris Baggett
Research Fellow & Childcare Outreach Coordinator, FCRU, SSRC
M.S., Clinical Psychology, Mississippi State University
- Email: Dorris.Baggett@ssrc.msstate.edu
- Phone: (662) 325-8079
Dorris H. Baggett, M.S, is a Research Fellow & Childcare Outreach Coordinator for the Family and Children Research Unit (FCRU) at the Social Science Research Center of Mississippi State University. Her career is marked by many years of service toward improving child health and well-being in the Mississippi Delta and around the state. She has dedicated her career to studying issues related to youth
Ms. Baggett has been instrumental in the development and implementation of projects that have utilized child care centers as venues for health-related research, education, and interventions. She has served as Co-Principal Investigator on a five-year research project funded through the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ). This study, Mississippi Building Research Infrastructure Capacity, was designed to enhance research infrastructure and involved three research feasibility studies focusing on ways to improve dental health outcomes among underserved, rural, predominantly minority children in 12 Mississippi Delta counties.
Currently, she works as a project scientist on the Delta Oral Health Project, whose goal is to improve the oral health of children in the Mississippi Delta. This project provides dental screenings and fluoride varnish applications to children attending licensed childcare centers in Coahoma County. She also works with the Mississippi KIDS COUNT Program and has recently been instrumental in the coordination, planning and implementation of the Mississippi KIDS COUNT Summit. The Mississippi KIDS COUNT program provides information on key child well-being indicators in Mississippi and is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In addition, she is a member of the research staff who is evaluating the Mississippi Healthy Students Act of 2007, a 5-year project entitled “Childhood Overweight & Obesity in Mississippi: Measuring the Impacts of Healthy School Legislation, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through a contract with the Mississippi Center for Health Policy.
Prior to her appointment with the FCRU, Ms. Baggett served as Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator on other SSRC research projects related to school dropouts, teen pregnancy, drug abuse among youth and juvenile delinquency. For these projects, she worked closely with the Mississippi School Attendance Officers in developing programs designed to identify Mississippi youths who were at-risk substance abusers and high school dropouts.
Ms. Baggett has been published, along with a team of FCRU researchers, in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry on topics related to children’s oral health. She recently provided research and editorial support for the Mississippi KIDS COUNT Data Book and contributes to the development of FCRU policy briefs, fact sheets and manuscripts. Ms. Baggett received a BS in Psychology and a MS in Clinical Psychology from Mississippi State University.
March 6, 2011SSRC 2011 Annual Report
Click here to download the PDF version. Click here for the interactive online version.
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