What the mission means to Jessica
For me, ZTT’s mission is about bringing together, activating, and fostering partnerships to continue to progress our collective work to ensure all babies and toddlers have a strong start to life.
Professional Background
Jessica Bushar is the Director of Research and Evaluation for the HealthySteps program. She is responsible for providing data and research and evaluation expertise to inform the HealthySteps National Office programmatic strategy and for overseeing aspects of the National Office work related to site reporting, continuous quality improvement, and efforts to expand the HealthySteps evidence base.
Jessica has more than a decade of experience evaluating health programs. Prior to joining HealthySteps, Jessica led efforts to expand the evidence base of Text4baby – a mobile health service designed to promote maternal and child health. In this role, Jessica managed program monitoring and evaluation, provided data- and evaluation-related technical assistance, and collaborated with external researchers to establish Text4baby’s efficacy and to develop new methodologies for assessing mobile health programs. Jessica also worked at NORC at the University of Chicago where she served in managing and supporting roles for many public health and health services research and evaluation projects. She received an MPH in maternal child health epidemiology from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BS in psychology from the Pennsylvania State University.
Future Vision
Jessica will continue to support the HealthySteps National Office work of scaling the reach and growing the impact of the evidence-based program and the expansion of child development and behavioral health promotion and prevention services in pediatric primary care. She sees partnering with and helping to support the transformation of pediatric primary care as an important piece of the work that is required for strengthening communities so that children and families can thrive.
