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As countries decentralize their systems and service delivery, Abt Global has a fruitful legacy of partnering with sub-national governments and communities to strengthen transparency, citizen engagement, and local governance. Our experts build capacity and responsiveness at all levels to support the political, administrative, and economic processes of decentralized government. We support the building of bridges between civil society and government for a collaborative model of governance. Abt’s insights support evidence-informed policymaking that responds to challenges in health, environment, and economic development.

Abt promotes stable, decent, affordable, and inclusive housing in the U.S. by building evidence for effective housing policy, community development, and asset-building strategies. Our evaluation work in the 1970s informed the creation and implementation of the Housing Choice Voucher program, the nation’s largest tenant-based rental assistance program. Today, our focus is homelessness, including management of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. We support initiatives to increase both the overall housing stock and the supply of affordable homes for everyone. All pose complex challenges for policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels.

Faced with limited housing supply and soaring rents and home prices, more people, particularly with low incomes, struggle to find or keep an affordable, safe place to live. Ripple effects of the affordable housing crisis include increasing health challenges, declining educational outcomes, and surging homelessness. Abt’s decades of rigorous evidence-building work with federal, state, local, and non-profit partners—combined with our training and technical assistance expertise—inform today’s efforts to make housing more affordable. We continue to shape rental assistance programs like Housing Choice Vouchers and public housing, policies to boost production and preservation of affordable housing, and initiatives to help make homeownership feasible. Our partners and teams enrich our cross-sector, data-driven approach with first-hand insights, enabling us to advance housing affordability for all.

Abt’s rigorous research, insights and technical assistance enable policymakers and practitioners to understand the scope of homelessness in America and identify what works to prevent and reduce it. Our team partners with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to produce national estimates of homelessness. With federal, state, and non-profit clients, we also examine the  effects of homelessness across races, ethnicities, ages, and abilities, including on military veterans, families, and youth. We help federal grantees, communities and nonprofits build capacity to manage prevention and assistance programs to move people from the streets into stable housing. And we partner with those same communities to design scalable, efficient systems that meet their needs and preferences.

Abt Global is a trusted partner for evidence-based U.S. policymaking to improve outcomes for children, youth, adults, and families. We apply rigorous approaches to workforce development, education, food and agriculture, child and family wellbeing, disability policy, and more. We analyze a wide range of employment and training strategies designed to improve social and economic well-being. Our decade-long evaluation of summer nutrition programs guided Congress to pass permanent summer grocery assistance for families. Our work informs improvements to programs that build fair futures and resilient systems, enabling all to thrive in a more secure society.

Abt identifies effective practices and programs to improve the well-being of children and families and prepare young adults for adulthood. Our state-of-the-art research and evaluation build evidence and helps answer hard questions about what works. We deliver the resulting data and technical assistance to guide informed choices about approaches to advance family economic independence, address adolescent behavioral health, and expand effective services for children and families.

Over 1 billion people worldwide are experiencing disability, and most people will experience it in their lifetimes. Abt’s evaluations and technical assistance advance disability research and inclusion of disability in U.S. public policies and programs in employment, income support, education, housing, and health. Our multi-disciplinary team of disability professionals includes experts in labor economics, evaluation methods, health policy research, survey methodology, qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis, and information technology. We combine experience implementing studies and systems, deep knowledge of a wide array of programs and issues, and quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research methods to understand needs, make changes, and measure impact.

Abt partners with federal agencies and others to build food security solutions for healthy communities while making food systems more resilient through sustainable agriculture. For decades, our studies have informed national policy decisions and legislation to prevent and mitigate food insecurity and promote nutrition—especially for children and families. Today, we also deliver climate vulnerability, impact assessments, and cost-benefit analyses for new climate-smart agricultural strategies. We regularly engage communities and other stakeholders as we compile data into best practices, enabling scaling of multisectoral programs to reach those most affected by food insecurity.

Abt builds evidence and identifies promising practices to help workers find and retain jobs and advance to higher-paying positions. Our experts provide technical assistance to partners such as U.S. federal, state, and local government workforce agencies; education institutions; and community and philanthropic organizations. Our strategies include a wide range of research-informed approaches generating actionable evidence to improve economic well-being. To promote fairness, our approaches address the needs of certain populations, such as healthcare workers and those with disabilities, substance use disorders, and justice system involvement.

Inclusive growth is at the core of resilient, sustainable economies worldwide. Abt Global collaborates with national governments, smallholder farmers, and business associations to fully engage women, youth, and other disadvantaged individuals, multiplying economic opportunities for all. Concurrently, we develop local capacity at institutional, firm, and farm levels to expand agricultural production, strengthen market systems, and adapt to climate change. We facilitate stronger business environments by brokering public-private dialogue, establishing private-sector partnerships, and supporting policy reforms.