Hannah Betesh

Hannah Betesh has over a decade of experience designing, managing, and conducting rigorous implementation and impact studies of interventions for low-income workers and families, including programs that address substance use disorder. Betesh’s methodological expertise is in measuring and documenting program implementation to support adoption of evidence-based practices. Her federal clients have included the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Betesh’s current research focuses on the intersection between employment and substance use disorder. She is project director for DOL’s SUPPORT Act Grants Evaluation of initiatives to address substance use disorder through workforce development, including programs that train peer recovery coaches.  She leads the implementation study for an ACF-funded evaluation of a peer recovery coaching intervention for parents engaged with child welfare due to substance use disorders. She serves as a topic area principal investigator on the Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research for DOL, synthesizing findings on interventions for workers with a wide range of barriers to employment. Betesh also co-chairs Abt’s implementation research affinity group.

For Abt’s Building Evidence on Employment Strategies project for ACF, Betesh led a descriptive study of five programs combining employment services with treatment and recovery services.  Before joining Abt, Betesh was a Senior Associate at Social Policy Research Associates, where she primarily conducted evaluations of workforce development and reentry programs for DOL, including a study of efforts within the public workforce system to address the opioid crisis.  Prior to that, she conducted evaluations of violence prevention, workforce development, and early childhood education initiatives at Berkeley Policy Associates.

Expertise

• Designing and implementing evaluations
• Assessing intervention implementation and delivery 
• Workforce development
• Substance misuse/opioids
• Reentry

Key Projects

• SUPPORT Act Grants Evaluation
• Building Evidence on Employment Strategies
• Expanding Evidence on Recovery and Reunification Interventions for Families
• Outcome-Based Decision-Making Framework for the Federal Probation and Pretrial Services System
• Clearinghouse for Labor Evaluation and Research

Professional Activities

• Co-chair, Employment and Training committee for the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
• Co-chair, National Association for Welfare Research and Statistics virtual conference series
• Adjunct Instructor, American University School of Public Affairs