Senior Researcher
Michael Cavanaugh, M.A., is a senior researcher at L&M Policy Research. Mr. Cavanaugh is an expert in facilitating community-based participatory research and evaluation with tribal communities, ethnography, and qualitative research methods. He has extensive experience leading interviews and focus groups with hard-to-reach populations on a range of sensitive issues including food security, intergenerational trauma, substance use, mental health, early childhood education, and child welfare.
As a lead evaluator for the Children Bureau’s Center for Native Child and Family Resilience since 2017, Mr. Cavanaugh is supporting tribal communities in building evidence to prevent child maltreatment and promote family wellbeing. He is a key contributor to forums, blogs, and articles focusing on culturally responsive research methods, rooted in his experience with creating curricula and facilitating cross-cultural understanding and cultural humility trainings for managerial research staff and frontline workers in the field on multiple studies.
Mr. Cavanaugh also regularly conducts consumer research for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to support and improve user experience on HealthCare.gov and Medicare.gov. As a task lead, he focuses on improving communication about Medicare coverage, choice, and quality as well as developing web-based tools to support plan choice decisions on the Health Insurance Marketplace.
Mr. Cavanaugh holds M.A.s in Anthropology and American Indian Studies from Michigan State University and UCLA.