Kate Welti is a senior research scientist in the sexual and reproductive health area at Child Trends.  Ms. Welti has a broad knowledge of quantitative research and evaluation methods and extensive experience conducting statistical analyses. She applies quantitative methods to study family planning service receipt, contraceptive use, and adolescent and young adult reproductive health. Her research focuses on factors including relationship context, community characteristics, and access to reproductive health services, and their relationship to the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults. Ms. Welti currently serves as the project director on the Data Analysis and Trends Research Grant with the Office of Population Affairs.  Under this grant, Ms. Welti is conducting quantitative analyses to examine trends in the characteristics of women receiving publicly funded family planning services, family planning service receipt, and contraceptive use.

Ms. Welti is an experienced program evaluator.  At Child Trends, she has taken a lead role in the evaluations of several school and community-based adolescent pregnancy prevention programs and is currently the lead scientist on an evaluation of an innovative sexual health program for youth funded under the Family and Youth Service Bureau’s Personal Responsibility Education Innovative Strategies Program (PREIS). As part of these projects, she formulates the research methods, develops data collection tools, ensures randomization and baseline equivalency, conducts power analyses, and analyzes survey and fidelity data to understand program impacts and to track program implementation.