MDRC is pleased to be supporting Stacey Bevan’s research placement in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania through December. This initiative, funded by U.S. Department of Education, aims to develop researchers to advance scientific evidence in education practice and policy. The program is especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches and effective implementation of research findings.

Bevan is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania with a primary appointment in the School of Nursing. She has a dual degree in international relations and biology from Tufts University. She completed her clinical training and earned a master’s in statistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of disability, immigration, and inequity with implications for child health providers. Bevan’s dissertation explores how immigrant families navigate their young children’s development in clinical and educational settings in the United States.

Bevan is a bilingual registered nurse and maintains a clinical practice in Philadelphia. She has worked with families in post-partum home visiting models and cared for children with acute mental health needs. Her clinical experience helps inform her research agenda, with a goal of helping nurses readily implement research findings in patient care.

During her research placement with MDRC, Bevan is working with Meghan McCormick to better understand the impacts of the Child First home visiting intervention, which MDRC is evaluating in a randomized controlled trial. The study began shortly before the COVID-19- pandemic when providers pivoted to conducting hybrid and telehealth visits. An analysis from McCormick’s team showed impacts in several domains during the pandemic, including reductions in caregivers’ job loss, residential mobility, self-reported substance abuse, and increased access to virtual services.

COVID’s interruption of the trial provided a unique opportunity for researchers to consider how the modality and dosage of the program differentially impacted families. To answer these questions, Bevan reviewed the clinical evidence for hybrid and telehealth home-visiting models and emerging results from studies conducted during the pandemic. She also investigated how researchers have measured the dosage of an intervention that families receive, which may impact the program’s benefits.