Chapin Hall

Xinyu Wei is a Researcher at Chapin Hall, specializing in child welfare program evaluation and data‑driven policy analysis. She supports state and international partners in assessing the implementation and impact of prevention and foster care initiatives, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods to examine service delivery, workforce capacity, equity, and child and family outcomes across large‑scale administrative and survey data. At Chapin Hall, Wei’s work spans evidence‑based prevention services, workforce practice, and statewide reform efforts under federal and consent decree mandates. She leads or contributes to analytic design, data management, and reporting for projects such as Family First Prevention Services Act implementation monitoring, high‑fidelity wraparound evaluation, and statewide quality review and permanency initiatives. Wei also works on cross‑jurisdictional and international projects, including evaluation frameworks for small group home services in Hong Kong and AI‑assisted systematic reviews of interventions for youth experiencing homelessness, helping synthesize complex evidence into actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners.

Prior to joining Chapin Hall, Wei worked as a Research Assistant at the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago on a public health evaluation study to reduce re-admission rates for COPD patients. She was also on a team conducting statistical analysis on administrative data in a cohort study on Illinois childcare workers’ employment trajectories during the pandemic, organized through Harris Policy Labs and the Illinois Department of Employment Security. She supported data analysis, visualization, presentation, and writing deliverables including policy memo and data dictionary.

Wei holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Chicago, with certificates in Data Analytics, Survey Research, and Policy Analysis. She received a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri–Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the Communication University of China.