Staff

Dr. Mindy Scott is the Principal Investigator of Activate. She provides oversight and guidance for all of Activates activities and planning. She has over 15 years of experience conducting research on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and translating the results of that research into accessible and relevant recommendations and strategies for program developers; program facilitators; and local, state, and federal funding agencies. Her research interests focus on adolescent and young adult relationship dynamics, adolescent parenting and coparenting, and young fathers. Dr. Scott works closely with program providers to provide research-based implementation and evaluation-focused training and technical assistance to help youth-serving programs meet their goals and improve outcomes for young people.

Dr. Amy Dworsky is the Co-Principal Investigator of Activate. She oversees Chapin Hall’s contributions and provides oversight and guidance for Activate’s activities and planning. She is a nationally recognized expert on youth transitioning out of foster care, youth in foster care who are pregnant or parenting, and the nexus between homelessness and child welfare system involvement. Amy has studied and written about the sexual and reproductive health of youth in foster care, sexual and reproductive health training for child welfare workers and foster parents, youth in foster care who are pregnant or parenting, and pregnant or parenting youth experiencing homelessness. Amy was a member of the Illinois DCFS Pregnancy Prevention Workgroup and the National Advisory Committee for the Integration of Teen Pregnancy Prevention into State and Local Foster Care Systems. She is a faculty member of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Pregnancy Prevention and Parenting Support – Virtual Resource Center.

Jan DeCoursey is the Project Director of Activate. She oversees Activate’s planning, activities, quality assurance, and operations. She has over 20 years of experience conducting applied research and evaluation focused on the implementation, effectiveness, and improvement of policies and programs in child welfare and youth transition to adulthood. Her research in child welfare includes research focused on expectant and parenting young people who are involved in the child welfare system and opportunity youth. In addition to her research experience, Jan spent several years developing and implementing youth programs as the Director of Youth Programs for the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago and was Program Director at the I Have a Dream Foundation. She began her career as a Family Educator in a diagnostic, residential foster home and is active as a Court Appointed Special Advocate.

Shaniah Smith is a project manager of Activate. Prior to working at Child Trends, Shaniah served as an office and education program coordinator for Everyday Miracles where she helped families with low-incomes and families of color request doula services as well as other pregnancy related services. She is also a birth doula herself, having taken the Community Outreach Perinatal Educator (COPE) training, and she is passionate about working with families to cultivate the best birth experience for them. Additionally, Shaniah has multiple years of experience working as an early childhood education teacher to infants and toddlers. As a woman of color, she is passionate about reproductive justice and working with families with low incomes and families of color. Shaniah graduated from Hamline University with a Bachelor of Arts in social justice and sociology with a concentration in reproductive justice.

Sam Beckwith is an adolescent health researcher with over eight years’ experience developing, conducting, and communicating about research on youth well-being. His primary research interests are adolescent opportunity, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and positive youth development, as well as the ways these topics build on one another. The end goal of his research is to build a better understanding of the ways programs and policies can serve and empower young people, improve outcomes starting at a critical juncture in their lives, and reduce inequities. Within Activate, his work has ranged from developing resources for youth-serving professionals on sex-based harassment in the workplace, to reporting on the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of opportunity youth.

Julie Blechman is the Dissemination Task Lead for Activate. She is a health education specialist who designs and implements strategies to engage with a variety of audiences. Julie manages a range of communications activities for the federal clients and projects, including communications planning, content development, editing, website management, and social media strategy and implementation.

Erin Devorah Carreon is a Researcher at Chapin Hall where she studies the implementation of programs, systems, and policies designed to improve access to quality early care and education, housing, and career pathways. Ms. Carreon is also a doctoral student at the University of Chicago where she studies the polarization of job quality in human service organizations and alternative governance structures. She holds a master’s degree in social work and has direct service experience as a youth worker and social worker.

Dr. Amanda Griffin works to address social inequities faced by youth who have been maltreated, youth who have experienced homelessness, and youth who have dual child welfare and juvenile justice involvement. Through this work, she has collaborated with community stakeholders to capture youth’s experiences to develop and evaluate resources and programs available to young people. As a member of the Activate Team, she has focused on disseminating rigorously evaluated research on sexually transmitted infections, condom use, and sex trafficking to service providers.

Dr. Melissa Kull is a Senior Researcher at Chapin Hall where she focuses on developing, implementing, evaluating, and strengthening programs and practices that serve children, youth, and families experiencing housing instability and homelessness. She has also worked on system-improvement efforts in child welfare and juvenile justice and currently leads projects to improve the array of services that address the needs and promote the strengths of youth and families experiencing homelessness. As a member of the Activate Team, she assess the needs of the field and translates rigorously evaluated research on condom use, sexually transmitted infections, and teen dating violence to youth-supporting professionals.

Dr. Jennifer Manlove is a sociologist and nationally recognized researcher on adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health, conducting research on sexual activity, contraceptive use, and unintended pregnancy. Her research focuses on ensuring adolescents have equitable access to education and services to meet their sexual and reproductive health needs. Dr. Manlove has experience leading multi-component research and evaluation projects. She has served as the Principal Investigator and/or lead evaluator on several randomized controlled trial evaluations of adolescent sexual health programs working with a variety of populations and settings.

Dr. Kelly Murphy brings a decade of experience bridging research and practice in youth-serving systems to Activate. Her work centers on transforming systems to align their practice with what research finds promotes healthy development. As part of this work, she focuses on understanding and advancing how research is used in practice. For example, Kelly led a study examining how judges and attorneys use research in their decision-making. Kelly brings knowledge in sexual and reproductive health and experience working with youth; she has served as teen pregnancy prevention program facilitator, a Court Appointed Special Advocate, and a mentor for youth in foster care.

Dr. Asari Offiong is the Needs Assessment Lead for Activate and contributes to research translation and resource development. As an adolescent health researcher and public health practitioner, she has a decade of experience in leading youth development programs and conducting mixed methods, community-based research in various metropolitan areas across the United States with non-profits, school districts, libraries, and government agencies. Furthermore, she has experience designing, implementing, managing, and evaluating culturally relevant programs related to substance use prevention and reproductive health for youth in inner-city settings. Her research projects have focused on reengaging opportunity youth, preventing early substance use and promoting positive sexual and reproductive health among the most vulnerable, including expecting and parenting adolescents. Also, she has a wealth of experience providing technical assistance to state and community-level youth-serving professionals around sexual health and youth development.

Emma Pliskin has over seven years of experience working in sexual and reproductive health including, for example, research related to post-abortion care and equitable access to contraception. Emma has published several peer reviewed journal articles, research briefs, and evidence-based resources including fact sheets on contraceptive use and access in the United States, trauma-responsive care for LGBTQ youth, and sex-based harassment among youth returning to the workforce. She additionally has experience supporting sexual assault survivors in securing legal and medical resources, and in implementing evidence-based workshops for people newly diagnosed with HIV.

Dr. Rachel Rosenberg is the Research Alliance Task Lead on Activate and contributes to research translation and resource development. Her work centers youth voice in research to transform the child welfare system. Rachel’s research focuses on the supports and services that youth need to transition from foster care to adulthood. Part of this work is ensuring that research is translated and used in practice. Rachel co-designed a hackathon which brough together computer scientists, data scientists, and researchers with direct service providers to improve data visualization capabilities of their data systems. Rachel brings knowledge of sexual and reproductive health and has served on committees to improve available data in the child welfare system on expectant and parenting youth.

Katelyn Rust is a Community Liaison at Child Trends. They joined the Activate project in December 2022 and will be contributing to the literature review brief about sex-based harassment and gender-affirming and trauma-informed care. They work primarily in research and technical assistance, supporting youth and community engagement, data collection, and reporting and dissemination activities. Their research interests include advancing equity and improving outcomes for Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+, and chronically ill and disabled children and youth.

Colleen Schlecht is dedicated to generating rigorous evidence and helping agencies and providers apply evidence to improve outcomes for children, youth, and families. She has worked on system improvement and capacity-building efforts targeting solutions for child welfare systems, pregnant and parenting teens, opportunity youth, and youth transitioning to adulthood. Schlecht is principal investigator on a project supporting runaway and homeless youth organizations to strengthen their capacities to improve youth outcomes. As a member of Activate, she has focused on research reviews and disseminating rigorously evaluated research on sex trafficking, intimate partner violence, sex-based harassment, and sexually transmitted infections to service providers.

Julia Tallant leads the development of the Resource Explorer and contributes to Activate’s research translation and resource development. They are particularly interested in the sexual health of queer and trans young people. At Child Trends, Julia works on projects relating to sexual health promotion, adolescent pregnancy prevention, and access to reproductive health resources.

Kate Welti is an Advisor on the Activate team. She brings over a decade of experience working on research and program evaluation projects related to sexual and reproductive health. Her work focuses on improving effective sexual health programming for youth and increasing equitable access to high-quality family planning care. Kate translates research and evaluation findings into actionable recommendations that are disseminated to policymakers and practitioners in the field of sexual and reproductive health. Her work on Activate has included designing the Sexual and Reproductive Health Resource Explorer and analyzing national data to understand and disseminate information on, the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of opportunity youth.

Nia-Simone Wood’s research interests focus on women, children, reproductive health, and increasing equitable access to resources for families across all socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. For Activate, Nia Simone assists with the Research Alliance and contributes to research translation and resource development. She is particularly interested in how social perceptions and experiences based on race, ethnicity, and gender identity directly impact access to care and health outcomes for reproductive matters globally. Nia-Simone completed her thesis on the links between the historical legacy of media messaging and public perception surrounding contraception in Black and Latinx communities. She has also served as a Board Member of the organization Unite for Reproductive Justice and Gender Equity (URGE) where she provided support to local community members concerning sexual and reproductive health matters.