AP-NORC Center Experts

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.

Michelle is an executive and mission-driven organizational leader with 25 years of experience developing, running, and studying publicly financed, health care programs. Michelle is a senior vice president leading NORC’s Health Care Programs department where she provides corporate leadership for an annual $40M portfolio of over 20 projects. She brings research and technical expertise, management skills, and extensive experience supporting a wide range of Federal, State, and nonprofit health agencies’ needs to ensure the successful execution of projects.

Michelle has corporate oversight responsibility for the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey – NORC’s largest field study, deploying a team of 220 field interviewers nationwide to conduct over 35,000 surveys annually on the health and health care experiences of over 14,000 Medicare beneficiaries.

Michelle also oversees NORC’s work in Medicaid and Marketplace coverage and has directed a number of projects involving data collection and monitoring, operational support, and technical assistance. Key projects include the CMS Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office’s Financial Alignment Initiative – a demonstration to test alternative approaches to providing integrated service delivery and payment models for individuals enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid and the Nationwide Adult Medicaid CAHPS survey – the first-of-its kind national patient experience survey of adults in the Medicaid fee-for-service and managed care delivery systems.

Before joining NORC, Michelle was the first Director of Eligibility and Enrollment Policy and Operations for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, where she led a team of more than 40 staff to support policymaking and program operations for determining eligibility and enrolling individuals into marketplace coverage. Prior to her federal service, Michelle was Associate Director for Long-Term Care at the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance, where she managed operations and oversight of the District’s long-term care services programs including Medicaid home and community-based service waivers. She spent more than a decade conducting policy research on Medicare and Medicaid for the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Stephen M. Smith is Senior Vice President of Health Sciences at NORC. Smith brings more than 25 years of experience in statistical methods, survey design and implementation, collection of biomarker data and health care research. He provides oversight and direction for the 60 staff and over $20 million per year of research projects housed in the Health Care Research department. Mr. Smith also serves as NORC’s corporate oversight and data collection expert for the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a project led by the Principal Investigator Linda Waite, Ph.D., at the University of Chicago that is breaking new ground in collection of biomarkers using field interviewers and assessing sensitive topics associated with social life among older Americans.

In his 16 years at NORC, Smith has served as Project Director on a range of health care and public health studies including the Hospital CAHPS survey of Patient Perceptions of Health Care Delivery (HCAHPS), a survey of Medicaid beneficiaries for an evaluation of Medicaid Health Insurance Flexibility Account Waivers, the Air Force Health Study, the Hanford Community Health Project, and the HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS) which was awarded the 2005 Policy Impact Award by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).

Prior to joining NORC, Smith spent several years conducting social research as a Senior Social Survey Officer in England’s Office of National Statistics (ONS). At ONS he worked on the Labor Force Survey, Census Validation Study, and a study on Electoral Registration.

Smith has co-authored papers that have appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs, Journal of Health Promotion Practice, Health Services Research, Journal of Gerontology, Field Methods, and the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. He is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and has been a regular presenter at AAPOR’s Annual Conference. He is also a member of AcademyHealth.