Jessica's interest in applied health research began whilst working at England’s healthcare regulator, the Healthcare Commission (now the Care Quality Commission), where she developed and evaluated methods for monitoring the quality of public health and healthcare delivery in England’s National Health Service.  She completed a Medical Research Council Fellowship/ PhD at UCL, examining inequalities in chlamydia testing in young people in 2011. 

In her role within the NIHR ARC North Thames Research Partnership Team she works closely with public health and healthcare professionals to develop research that addresses questions of importance to public health and healthcare delivery. Her current work programme includes studies that seek to improve pathways to a cancer diagnosis, implementation of supported self-management in asthma and maximising the valueof linked health and local government data to service delivery.

Jessica also has an enduring commitment to public health capacity building, education and training. She is an Examiner for the UK Faculty of Public Health international membership exams. She has led development of online courses in screening, population health, evidence based practice and clinical reasoning and is co-author of Mastering Public Health, a textbook on public health. She is funded by the Clinical Research Network North Thames to support public health research capacity building in local authorities and in this role she co-chairs LAPHR-N - the Local Authority Public Health Research Network (London and North Thames).