About MDRC
Portilla is a research associate in the Family Well-Being and Child Development policy area at MDRC. She is currently working on the implementation research and impact analyses for the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE), a large-scale national evaluation of home visiting programs that intend to prevent child maltreatment and improve maternal and child health, parenting skills, and child development outcomes. She is also involved in the MIHOPE long-term follow-up study, which aims to provide design options for how to assess long-term impacts on families and children who participated in MIHOPE.
Before her graduate studies, Portilla worked on several projects in MDRC’s early childhood portfolio: Head Start CARES, Foundations of Learning, and two early-childhood-focused programs in the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project: Kansas/Missouri Early Head Start and the Rhode Island Child Add-On. Her research in graduate school focused on early childhood development, social inequality, stress reactivity, and child and maternal executive functioning, in both domestic and international settings such as Pakistan and Colombia. Portilla earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from New York University and a PhD in developmental and psychological sciences from Stanford University.
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MDRC Publications
ReportResults from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation
January, 2019Home visiting provides information, resources, and support to expectant low-income parents and low-income families with young children. This report provides the final results from a national evaluation of four major evidence-based models of home visiting.
BriefA Summary of Results from the MIHOPE and MIHOPE-Strong Start Studies of Evidence-Based Home Visiting
January, 2019Home visiting provides information, resources, and support to expectant low-income parents and low-income families with young children. This brief summarizes reports from two national studies of early childhood home visiting.
ReportResults from the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation
October, 2018Adverse experiences in children’s earliest years can negatively affect development. Home visiting for expectant parents and families with young children can help, but implementation research is scant. MIHOPE, a national evaluation of a federal home visiting program, is examining 88 local programs across four evidence-based models to learn about their implementation and impacts.
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Other Publications
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Projects
Charles Michalopoulos, Kristen Faucetta , Helen Lee, Megan Millenky, Ximena Portilla, Marie-Andrée SomersA small body of research has found that families who participated in a home visiting program when their children were young may continue to benefit through their children’s adolescence.
Virginia Knox, Charles Michalopoulos, Sharon Rowser, JoAnn Hsueh, Helen Lee, Desiree Principe Alderson, Dina A. R. Israel, Erika Lundquist, Kristin Porter, Electra Small, Carolyn Hill, Rebecca Behrmann, Ximena Portilla, Anne Warren, Samantha Xia, Kelly Saunders, Ilana BlumHome visiting programs operate around the country to prevent child maltreatment, improve maternal and child health outcomes, and increase school readiness.
Shira Kolnik Mattera, Electra Small, Nina Castells, Sharon Rowser, Barbara S. Goldman, JoAnn Hsueh, Ximena Portilla, Frieda Molina, Howard Bloom, Patrizia ManciniHead Start, which serves nearly 1 million low-income children, is the nation’s largest federally sponsored early childhood education program.
Cindy Redcross, Dan Bloom, Lauren Cates, JoAnn Hsueh, Dina A. R. Israel, Charles Michalopoulos, Johanna Walter, Sally Dai, Ximena PortillaFueled by a strong economy and passage of the 1996 federal welfare law, which imposed new work requirements and time limits on cash benefits, welfare caseloads declined precipitously during the 1990s.
Low-income children too often begin school without the basic behavioral, emotional, and cognitive skills that they need to thrive academically — putting them at an immediate disadvantage and contributing to the large gap that develops in school achievement between low-income children and their more affluent peers.