Armando Jimenez, previously the Director of the Research & Evaluation Department, will now serve as the Director of the Evaluation Center of Excellence Department. Jimenez will be the organization’s leader for promoting and providing evaluation best practices, performance measurement methodologies, and robust data analysis to improve organizational effectiveness, program performance and impact.
Over the last 12 years with First 5 LA, Armando has directed the evaluations of several major initiatives such as Healthy Kids, which aims to provide health insurance to every child age 0-5 in L.A. County; First 5 LA’s Universal Preschool Initiative, which aims to provide access to a high quality preschool experience for every 4-year-old child in L.A. County; and First 5 LA’s Partnership For Families initiative, which works to reduce abuse and neglect among children ages 0-5.
Armando also leads the Commission’s efforts to develop and implement a policy-relevant research agenda to support the development of new program initiatives within Los Angeles, in the Southern California Region and across the State of California.
Prior to joining the Commission staff, he served as Evaluation and Research Coordinator at UCLA’s School of Public Health – Technical Assistance Group, and was the Head of the Evaluation and Research Unit at the Los Angeles Department of Health Services – Public Health Planning Office. In that capacity, he developed original research and made recommendations to improve community-based public health services in complex urban environments. Some of his major projects included a prenatal study among high-risk African American women; evaluations aimed at improving domestic violence services; and assessments of a number of public health projects involving tobacco control, chronic disease and public/private partnership programs. Armando received a master’s degree in Public Health in Behavioral Science and Health Education from UCLA, and a Bachelor of Science in Psychobiology from UCLA.
