Jen is a principal research director in the Health Sciences department at NORC. She is a versatile research leader with over 20 years of experience directing data collection, analysis, dissemination, and technical assistance efforts for federal and other clients. She leads teams of researchers and data scientists to synthesize health information from a range of sources, including survey, administrative, and real-world health care data, to create high-quality data products, reports, and visualizations. She develops strategies to disseminate timely and policy-relevant findings. She leverages her expertise in research methods and the social and behavioral sciences, training in epidemiology, and background in community health to lead the development of user-friendly guidance and technical assistance to researchers and clinicians.

Jen serves as associate project director for the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), where she is responsible for providing oversight for data acquisition, data processing, research and analytics, dissemination, and technical assistance. In addition, she managed NORC’s work with Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality to implement and conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of the AHRQ Safety Program for MRSA Prevention, a multi-year quality improvement program to reduce healthcare-associated infections in hospitals and long-term care facilities throughout the United States.

Jen previously led analytics, dissemination, and user support for the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Under her leadership, the MCBS released an expansive suite of resources for data users, including innovative products such as the MCBS Chartbook, which was recognized with a CMS Operational Excellence Award for its importance in increasing transparency, and the MCBS Interactives Data Tool, which won an Association of Public Data Users (APDU) Data Viz Award. Jen has also directed studies on health topics for The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, including surveys focusing on long-term care and caregiving, medical errors and patient safety, healthy aging, and obesity.

Prior to NORC, Jen coordinated academic research studies on behavioral health funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for the Division of Prevention and Community Research at Yale University's School of Medicine and at the Institute for Juvenile Research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She started her career as an outreach worker for a community-based health organization.