Erin Whitham, M.S.W

Erin Whitham, M.S.W.

Research Associate

Erin Whitham joined HZA as a Research Associate in the fall of 2016. Based out of the firm’s South Portland, Maine office, Ms. Whitham has contributed to several of HZA’s evaluations, including those of two child abuse prevention programs in Iowa. For the firm’s evaluation of Iowa’s Community Based Child Abuse Prevention Program, she assisted in the analysis and interpretation of quantitative data from a pre-/post-survey designed to measure change in families’ protective factors. For a similar evaluation in Iowa, Ms. Whitham conducted a literature review of evidence-based child abuse prevention programs as part of an effort to assess the state’s preventive services program. As part of a similar effort in West Virginia, she participated in the analysis of survey data to measure change and program satisfaction for the statewide evaluation of West Virginia’s federally funded protective services programs. Ms. Whitham is responsible for the outcome evaluation of Maine’s Title IV-E Waiver initiative. She conducted quantitative data analysis of the State’s case management data and data from the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths assessment tool to measure improved stability, health and well-being, as well as the quality of permanent connections of young children with substance abusing parents.

Ms. Whitham comes to HZA most immediately from Digital Research, Inc. in Kennebunk, Mainewhere she worked as a Research Associate, providing project management on a variety of market research studies for corporate and public-sector clients, including customer satisfaction, brand awareness, and travel and tourism studies. She developed project timelines, quantitative survey tools, and data analysis plans to deliver helpful insights. Her responsibilities also included programming online surveys using a web-based survey tool, and drafting reports detailing research findings for clients using best practices in data visualization. Prior to that, Ms. Whitham was a Senior Research Assistant at the Center for Public Health Systems Science at Washington University in St. Louis. During her time there, she served as a member of the evaluation team for an evaluation of the Expanding Coverage Initiative, a project aimed at reducing the number of uninsured Missourians to less than five percent within five years. She worked in collaboration with funders, project partners, and other stakeholders to develop evaluation measures; provided technical assistance to grantee organizations regarding evaluation reporting; and developed and implemented data collection, management, and analysis protocols, including measures for evaluating health insurance literacy. Ms. Whitham previously served as the Research Coordinator at Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a multi-site addiction treatment provider where she provided oversight of day-to-day research activities including data collection and analysis, completion of literature reviews, and preparation of reports. She maintained tracking data on more than 800 former patients, developed, administered, and analyzed surveys for an organization-wide staff training needs assessment, and assisted with research dissemination efforts, including the preparation of manuscripts, presentations, and reports.

Ms. Whitham received a B.A. in Social Work from Seton Hall University in 2008, and earned her M.S.W. the following year from Washington University in St. Louis.

Program Evaluation

From Vermont Children and Families Community Response Pilot Project Evaluator Proposal – December 2017

Erin Whitham, M.S.W.

Ms. Whitham has directed several of HZA’s evaluations, including those of child abuse prevention programs in Iowa and West Virginia and a home visiting program in Mississippi. She conducted the final data analysis and report writing for the evaluation of the Healthy Homes Mississippi (HHM) Fatherhood Initiative in Mississippi. Working with data extracted from Datatude’sFamilyWise data management system she performed both qualitative analysis of family case plan goals and quantitative analysis in SPSS of the number of fathers participating in HHM and their demographic characteristics.

For the firm’s ongoing evaluation of Iowa’s child abuse prevention programs, Ms. Whitham conducts quantitative analysis of pre- and post-survey data, measuring changes in families’ protective factors. She does the interpretation and report writing of the annual and program-level evaluation reports and provides ongoing technical assistance to grant administrators and program providers. For example, following the 2016 annual report, she hosted a webinar with providers to discuss the results and how staff can use their individual program reports to inform their continuous quality improvement processes. The annual evaluation report is incorporated into annual reports to the Iowa Department of Human Services and is used to meet federal reporting requirements to the Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention grant program.

As part of a similar evaluation of child abuse prevention programs in West Virginia, Ms. Whitham participated in the analysis of survey data to measure program satisfaction in addition to changes in protective factors among child abuse prevention program participants. Home visiting programs are among those prevention programs who participate in both the Iowa and West Virginia evaluations.

Finally, Ms. Whitham is responsible for oversight of the day-to-day operations of the outcome evaluation of Maine’s Title IV-E Waiver initiative. In this capacity, she conducts weekly data quality assurance checks to identify data errors, follow up with program providers and ongoing training on the project’s data management systems. In addition to overseeing the conduct of other data analysis for the project, she completes the analysis of survey data gathered from caseworkers and parents enrolled in the project, writing the semi-annual evaluation reports detailing the results of the outcome evaluations. On a monthly basis she shares evaluation updates with program providers and state administrators to gather feedback and support the use of evaluation data in ongoing efforts to improve the program.

From Indiana Home Visiting Benchmark Reporting Proposal – June 2017

Erin Whitham, MSW has directed several of HZA’s evaluations, including those of child abuse prevention programs in Iowa and West Virginia and a home visiting program in Mississippi. She conducted the final data analysis and report writing for the evaluation of the HHM Fatherhood Initiative in Mississippi. Working with data extracted from Datatude’sFamilyWise data management system she performed both qualitative analysis of family case plan goals and quantitative analysis in SPSS of the number of fathers participating in HHM and their demographic characteristics.

For the firm’s ongoing evaluation of Iowa’s child abuse prevention programs, Ms. Whitham conducts quantitative analysis of pre- and post-survey data in SPSS measuring changes in families’ protective factors. She also does the interpretation and report writing of the annual and program-level evaluation reports. The annual evaluation report is incorporated into annual reports to the Iowa Department of Human Services and is used to meet federal reporting requirements to Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention grant program.

Finally, Ms. Whitham is responsible for oversight of the day-to-day operations of the outcome evaluation of Maine’s Title IV-E Waiver initiative. She conducted weekly data quality assurance check to identify data errors and follow up with program providers. In addition to overseeing the conduct of other data analysis for the project, she completed the data analysis of survey data in SPSS gathered from parents enrolled in the project and wrote the semi-annual evaluation report detailing the results of both the process and outcome evaluations.

Erin Whitham has worked on child abuse and neglect prevention programs, including evaluations of Iowa and West Virginia’s Community Based Child Abuse Prevention programs which fund organizations that provide parent development, home visiting, crisis case and respite care services across the state. In addition to her work on data analysis and reporting already discussed, Ms. Whitham provides evaluation technical assistance to grantees. For the Iowa prevention program evaluation, she developed a presentation on how organizations can use their individual evaluation results for continuous quality improvement. Ms. Whitham has also conducted a literature review of evidence-based child abuse prevention programs as part of an effort to assess Iowa’s preventive services program.

From SAMHSA IDIQ Proposal – December 2016

Junior Research Analyst: Erin Whitham, M.S.W.

Ms. Whitham is a new hire, joining the firm late in 2016. Since 2009 when she received a Master’s degree in Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis, Ms. Whitham has worked in human services, doing both direct service delivery and research. She served as a volunteer coordinator for a center for women in transition, where she developed, administered and analyzed surveys of clients for multi-site addiction treatment provider. To help analyze the impact of the Affordable Care Act, she developed the instruments and analyzed data related to health insurance literacy in Missouri. The program was designed to reduce the number of Missouri residents without health insurance. She has provided technical assistance to agencies collecting the data on a variety of projects. In addition, she has designed web-based surveys and written research reports for several of her projects. At HZA Ms. Whitham is analyzing survey data for Healthy Homes Mississippi, conducting evaluations for Prevent Child Abuse Iowa and analyzing the protective factors survey for West Virginia.