Our Team

Lori Burrell, MA, LSW, is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has worked with the Early Childhood Services Research team since 1998.  She currently supports the Resource and Coordinating Center for the Early Intervention to Promote Cardiovascular Health of Mothers and Children Project (ENRICH). ENRICH is a multisite, clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a cardiovascular health intervention, delivered in the context of home visiting, to promote and address disparities in maternal and early childhood cardiovascular health. She also supports the team on projects for the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) to advance the field of precision home visiting. Previously she was a lead team member in randomized trials of statewide home visiting programs in Hawaii and Alaska. She also led MIECHV evaluation activities in New Jersey and directed the efforts to acquire and analyze state child abuse and neglect data across 12 states participating in the legislatively mandated, Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE). Lori holds a Master of Arts in Experimental Psychology from Towson University and a Master of Social Work from the University of Pittsburgh.

Anne Duggan, ScD, is professor emerita of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health, Health Policy and Management, and Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She works with public and private agencies at all levels – national, state, and local – in research to strengthen services for young families to achieve health equity of children and parents by addressing individual and social determinants of health, family functioning, and parenting. Much of her work focuses on early home visiting. She launched statewide evaluations of Hawaii, Maryland and New Jersey and served as co-principal investigator of the national evaluation of the federal scale up of evidence-based home visiting, taking the lead on its implementation study. She was founding director of the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) and is now Director Emerita. HARC is a national research and development platform whose members represent all key home visiting stakeholder groups. HARC’s role is to shift home visiting research to answer the question, what works best, for which families, in which contexts, why and how?  The goal is to broaden and strengthen home visiting’s role in improving population health by achieving greater equity through precision services responsive to parent, family and community context. HARC engages hundreds of home visiting stakeholders in building the Precision Paradigm as the foundation for such research.  The Precision Paradigm incorporates a standard framework and language, stakeholder partnership, innovative research designs, and Open Science principles to promote cross-study, cross-model learning and evidence-based policy and practice.

Dylan B. Jackson, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Co-Director of the Health Criminology Research Consortium. As a trained life-course and developmental criminologist, his research focuses on fostering the health and well-being of children, youth, and families in the face of violence, adversity, and exposure to the criminal legal system. His current early childhood services research is funded by the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and assesses the needs of justice-involved families enrolled in evidence-based home visiting programs across the United States. The project seeks to illuminate current and potential policies and practices to improve services and outcomes for these parents and their children.

Anne Lilly, MSPH, is a research associate on the Early Childhood Services Research Team at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In this role, Anne leads the team’s New Jersey projects which include evaluating MIECHV home visiting programs and the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (ECCS) initiative and providing continuous quality improvement (CQI) technical assistance to various programs in NJ’s early childhood system of care. From 2017-2019, Anne led the team’s randomized control trial of a coaching intervention to enhance goal planning in New Jersey Home Visiting programs. From 2015-2017, Anne managed the team’s evaluation of the Child and Family Nurse Program. Anne received her Master’s in the Science of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. In prior roles, she served as a Teacher Trainer and Health Educator with Peace Corps South Africa and as a Program Evaluator with Baltimore City Public Schools.

Cynthia Minkovitz, MD, MPP, is the William H. Gates, Sr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Professor of Pediatrics in the School of Medicine. Her research focuses on enhancing the quality of preventive services for children and understanding the impact of systems reforms on the health and well-being of children and families. Dr. Minkovitz is a founding member and serves on the Leadership Team for the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC).  She co-leads the Resource and Coordinating Center for ENRICH and works with key partners on evaluations of Universal Home Visiting in New Jersey, the Maryland Pritzker Prenatal to Three initiative and New Jersey’s Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five. She also leads the Johns Hopkins University Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health and co-led the national evaluations of Healthy Steps for Young Children and the Dyson Community Pediatrics Training Initiative.

Kay O’Neill, MSPH, is a research associate in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has ten years of experience working with the Early Childhood Services Research Program.  Kay is currently the director of the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) Coordinating Center. She is also a coordinator on the NHLBI ENRICH Resource and Coordinating Center. She has also coordinated several state evaluations and a randomized controlled trial of a brief parenting intervention in Georgia. Kay holds a Master of Science in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Allison West, PhD, MSW, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. Dr. West’s research interests focus on the health and wellbeing of expectant families and families with young children facing multiple, complex adversities. She has a particular interest in dual generation home-based service delivery strategies. Her work is highly applied and incorporates intervention and evaluation research methods to assess program fidelity, test effects of programs and program enhancements on outcomes, and deepen understanding of causal pathways. Dr. West’s research is highly interdisciplinary and crosses multiple sectors within early childhood systems – health, education, and social services. She is the Principal Investigator or co-investigator for several studies addressing Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) with highly stressed families, such as families headed by parents with substance use disorders or intellectual disabilities. She is also principal investigator on national studies that aim to strengthen home visitor communication skills and workforce wellbeing. Dr. West serves on the leadership team of the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC). She obtained her Master’s degree and PhD in Social Work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. 

Alexis Campbell, MSPH, is a Senior Research Program Coordinator II in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Alexis supports the team’s New Jersey projects, including New Jersey’s Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five, the Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems: Health Integration Prenatal-to-Three Program, and the Universal Home Visiting evaluation. Her research interests include prenatal-to-three systems of care, parent engagement, and equity. She received her Master of Science in Public Health degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Jordyn Carll is a Senior Research Program Coordinator in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She primarily supports the work of the Resource and Coordinating Center (RCC) for the Early Intervention to Promote Cardiovascular Health of Mothers and Children (ENRICH) program. Specifically, Jordyn manages meetings and communications across study committees and clinical center partners, and develops study policy and procedure manuals and data collection tools. While supporting ENRICH, Jordyn is also pursuing her Master of Public Health at the Bloomberg School. Jordyn is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and holds a Bachelor of Science in Community Health from Salisbury University.

Diana Chute, MSPH, is a Senior Research Program Coordinator in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She currently works for the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) on projects related to precision home visiting. Diana holds a Master of Science in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Delaware.

Alexandra Cirillo Lilli, MPH, is a senior research data analyst in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. She works on the New Jersey Home Visiting Evaluation managing data and conducting analysis to contribute to the project’s continuous quality improvement and evaluation activities. Alex previously worked on the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) study analyzing survey and child welfare data to inform the study’s final reports. She is an AmeriCorps alumna and holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jane Daniels, PA, MPH, is a senior research program coordinator in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. She has worked with Anne Duggan and Allison West in the field of home visiting research for the past 9 years. Currently, Jane coordinates and supports various projects of the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC). She previously coordinated a variety of studies around research and evaluation of Maryland’s Maternal and Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program. Jane received her dual Physician Assistant certification and Master of Public Health degree from George Washington University. Her previous experiences range from emergency room medicine to event planning to full-time parenting.

Sarah Hulit, MS, MPH, is a Research Data Analyst on the Early Childhood Services Research Team.  She supports the New Jersey Home Visiting Evaluation by managing data and conducting analysis to contribute to the project’s continuous quality improvement and evaluation activities. Her research interests are in evaluation methodology and understanding the impact of federal and state policy on population-level socioeconomic and health outcomes.  She received a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a Master of Science in Nutrition Policy and Programs from Tufts University, and a Bachelor of Science in Health Science and Policy from Brandeis University.

Ciara (Zagaja) Spinosa, MPH, is a Research Program Manager in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has worked with the team since 2018. She currently coordinates the Jackie Walorski Center for Evidence-based Case Management project and works on initiatives for the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC) to advance the field of precision home visiting. She previously coordinated the Cross-Model Precision Prenatal Home Visiting project and the evaluation of Maryland Goal Plan Strategy (GPS) Innovation project. Ciara holds a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Joanna Wright, PhD, is a Program Officer on the Early Childhood Services Research Team at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She joined the ESCRP team in 2023 and coordinates the team’s work on continuous quality improvement and evaluation for universal postnatal home visiting in New Jersey. Joanna is a former early childhood education practitioner with expertise in early childhood socio-emotional development, implementation science, measurement, and evaluation. Joanna received her PhD in Prevention Science from the University of Oregon. 

Kelsey Williams is a PhD candidate concentrating in Child Health within the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, where she also completed her MSPH. She is a Maternal and Child Health Center of Excellence trainee and has also completed a certificate in Evaluation of International Health Programs. Kelsey is currently a research assistant on the ENRICH trial, New Jersey MIECHV evaluations, and Project Viva analyses. Previously at JHU, she has worked on other projects with the Early Childhood Services Research Program, the Maryland Department of Health, and Performance Monitoring for Action, and also served as SOURCE Service Scholar for Project PLASE. She has served as a teaching assistant for many classes, including for introductory public health courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. For her dissertation, she is investigating the impact of community and structural determinants of health on early childhood home visiting outcomes.