Andrea Vazzano is a research scientist and the deputy program area director for Sexual and Reproductive Health. She has over 15 years of experience leading research, programming, and technical assistance focused on understanding and strengthening how programs, relationships, and service environments shape youth and families’ health and well-being. Her work spans sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health, healthy relationships and coparenting, and adolescent health and development, among other topics.

At Child Trends, Andrea conducts qualitative and mixed-methods research and evaluations to inform clinical practice and program improvement. She has extensive experience designing and conducting interviews, focus groups, surveys, program observations, and participatory research activities such as Photovoice with youth, adults, parents, couples, and program and clinical staff. She has led qualitative data collection and analysis for large federal studies; designed process, implementation, and developmental evaluations; developed evaluation plans and learning agendas; created measures and data collection tools; and used findings to support ongoing program learning and improvement. She also provides methodological leadership and guidance in qualitative research and community engagement across Child Trends.

Andrea has led research, evaluation, and community engagement for major federally funded initiatives across multiple agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Population Affairs (OPA), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE), Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She currently leads learning and evaluation for an OPA-funded innovation accelerator for adolescent health and leads engagement and qualitative research for an OFA-funded project on preventing and addressing intimate partner violence in human service programs. She previously led OFA-funded research on how fatherhood programs support healthy relationships and coparenting; studied innovations in Title X family planning service delivery under an OPA grant; and evaluated technical assistance delivered under a CDC project to improve school-based HIV prevention efforts across states.

Before joining Child Trends, Andrea managed the pilot and adaptation of a coparenting intervention for new parents at Georgetown University. She also spent 5 years supporting the design, implementation, and evaluation of sexual and reproductive health programming internationally. She received a bachelor’s degree in Literature from American University and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.