Elizabeth C. Hair is a Senior Research Scientist in the Public Health Research department at NORC at the University of Chicago. She is currently managing several large-scale, multiyear projects. She has more than 20 years of experience in conducting research on child and family well-being and has studied issues related to healthy weight, children's health and mental health, childhood obesity, health risk behaviors among adolescents, vulnerable youth, and the transition to adulthood. She has expertise in survey and questionnaire design and in synthesizing and reporting on program practices and policies aimed at improving the well-being of children and youth. She has extensive experience related to evaluation, technical assistance, and performance measurement. Hair has also provided expertise on de-identifying health data for research, especially data that meet the requirements for HIPAA Safe Harbor.
She has received funding from federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. She has also received funding from several major U.S. foundations. Hair has published her work widely in leading research journals including Development Psychology, Journal of Adolescent Health, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, and Journal of Maternal and Child Health.
Hair also has advanced statistical training and experience including multivariate and logistic regression, analysis of variance, structural equation modeling, growth curve analyses, cluster analyses, latent profile analyses, growth mixture modeling, and hierarchical linear modeling. Prior to her work at NORC, Hair worked at Child Trends for ten years, where she was the program director of the Health Area from 2005–2009.