Contexts of work
🇰🇪 Kenya
🇵🇪 Peru
🇳🇬 Nigeria
🇧🇩 Bangladesh
🇲🇼 Malawi
Projects
Jess Long
Data rooted in women’s lived experiences has the power to shape tools that genuinely improve lives. The most meaningful research integrates rigorous quantitative analysis with contextual knowledge drawn from real-world experience.
Jess is an epidemiologist and data scientist dedicated to understanding how inequity shapes health outcomes, and to designing data-driven approaches that close gaps in access to evidence-based care. Her work spans domestic and global health, with expertise in maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, infectious diseases, vaccines, health equity, and implementation science.
Her early research focused on uncovering the drivers of health disparities, examining why inequities persist and identifying modifiable factors that influence access to and uptake of care. During her doctoral training, she used novel epidemiologic methods to better characterize HIV risk and barriers to care among marginalized communities. As a postdoctoral fellow, her work shifted toward solutions: applying implementation science to identify feasible, scalable strategies to improve healthcare delivery. She led research to strengthen triage systems for obstetrical emergencies in Kenya to reduce stillbirths and contributed to expanding access to COVID-19 vaccine research among Native American communities.
After transitioning from academia to the nonprofit sector, Jess worked at the Gates Foundation before joining Sonder Collective. She was drawn to Sonder and the Pathways project for its commitment to pairing rigorous analytics with real-world contextual insight to drive meaningful uptake of data-driven solutions. As part of the Pathways team, Jess provides epidemiologic expertise and advanced data analysis to strengthen tools and translate complex data into actionable insights.