Leah Jennings is a research analyst in Mathematica’s Human Services business unit. She specializes in evaluating federal nutrition assistance programs that are designed to improve food security and reduce disparities in dietary quality: the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). She has expertise in administrative data collection, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, and technical writing.
Jennings has worked primarily on projects for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). On the School Meals Operations study, she coordinated administrative data collection from more than 20 state agencies to understand the impact of meal distribution flexibilities in child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also coauthored several reports and memoranda for the SNAP Employment and Training (E&T) Pilots Evaluation, a large randomized evaluation of strategies to help SNAP participants find and keep jobs, increase their earnings, and improve their food security. She is interested in co-creative evaluation designs that are centered on the needs of the organization and the populations being served. She supports delivery of technical assistance to human services agencies, including the Rapid Cycle Evaluation of Operational Improvements in SNAP E&T programs, which uses the Learn, Innovate, and Improve (LI2) framework to identify creative solutions to agencies’ challenges. Jennings also supports systematic reviews of educational interventions aimed at improving literacy and STEM outcomes and reducing educational inequities.
Before joining Mathematica in 2020, Jennings designed and implemented rigorous evaluations of food security interventions at the Nutrition Policy Institute and Vouchers 4 Veggies in California. She has a master’s degree in public health from the University of California, Berkeley with a specialty in nutrition, and a B.A. from Elon University in public health.
The demonstration of Direct Certification with Medicaid for Free and Reduced-Price Meals (DCM-F/RP) allows authorized States and school districts to use information from Medicaid data files to identify students eligible to receive meals under the NSLP and SBP for free or at a reduced price.
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