Neighborhood
in Need
Assistant professor to
use grant, research to
help save children’s lives
The stories are hard to read, and the statistics are
grim. But Dr. Melissa Bemiller immerses herself in them
anyway. Children in the Augusta region are abused and
die from non-accidental trauma in alarming numbers, and
she wants to help end the crisis.
An assistant professor of criminal justice in the
Department of Social Sciences, Bemiller is partnering
with Children’s Hospital of Georgia’s Pediatric Trauma
Program to conduct the research needed to understand
the causes of the high child abuse and mortality rates in
the CSRA and to suggest methods and interventions to
prevent deaths. In support of this project, Bemiller has
just been awarded a grant of more than $260,000 from the
Georgia Trauma Foundation. The grant is one of only five
grants to be funded by the Commission.
“I want to help give these children a voice by assisting
in discovering risk factors and correlates and formulating
proactive strategies to help combat this increasing
problem,” said Bemiller.
She will spend the next two years working with
local law enforcement, medical personnel, academic
researchers, and community partners to identify policies
and programs to reverse the trend line and save lives.
“Dr. Bemiller has spent 10 years researching childhood
abuse and child lethality and injury prevention,” said
department chair Dr. Kim Davies. “We are lucky to have
her working in the Pamplin College where she contributes
to our highly productive Social Sciences department
through her research and teaching. I am so very pleased
that she has been awarded this grant to help uncover the
underlying social and behavioral factors that impact the
escalating rates of childhood abuse and lethality we are
seeing in the Augusta area.”
Bemiller received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the
University of Central Florida. She joined our faculty in
2017.
6 | #WeArePamplin · Spring 2019