Hayden Center

Dr. Hayden D. Center, Jr. is a contributing faculty member at Walden University. He has been there for 11 years and teaches courses in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program. He is also been a licensed professional counselor (LPC) specializing in addiction issues for over 30 years.
Dr. Center has worked as a consultant in alcohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse prevention since 1987. Hayden has worked in the field of prevention for more than 30 years. He served as the director of a US Department of Education (USDOE) grant while at Auburn University. He served the State of Alabama Department of Education as the coordinator of the state Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program. Hayden was a consultant to the Alabama Governor’s Office of Drug Abuse Policy for ten years and has worked with numerous state and local agencies in the state of Alabama. He served as the evaluator for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s (CSAP) Southeast Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies (SECAPT) and the Border Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies (BCAPT). He has provided over 300 trainings and workshops on the topics of “science-based prevention,” “evaluation,” “risk and protective factors”, and “sustainability.” He has worked with numerous agencies and organizations at the national, state, and local levels as an evaluator, including three Drug-Free Community grants. His experience includes working with several projects to develop data bases, collect and interpret data, and produce data dissemination products and materials.
Most recently Hayden has conducted trainings and webinars on implementation science, the psychopharmacology of marijuana, opioid use disorder, the opioid epidemic, and preventing opioid overdose death. He is also working on the development of a sustainability toolkit that was released in the Fall of 2019. He and three colleagues presented an overview of the toolkit at the National Prevention Network (NPN) Conference in Chicago in 2019.
Dr. Center has been providing counseling services to clients for over 30 years. He specializes in substance use issues, depression, stress, and adolescent issues.