Allison Kemner oversees the organizations research and learning activities for the Parents as Teachers National Center, and she collaborates with a research network to advance the organization’s research and learning agenda. Additionally, she oversees the data collection, analysis, and dissemination of information about the impact and reach of Parents as Teachers, as well as providing guidance in the areas of quality assurance, quality improvement, and outcomes measurement. Allison supported the development of Parents as Teachers data service documentation and data collection system that supports continuous quality improvement of the evidence-based home visiting model.
Allison provided oversight for the evaluation of the state of Wyoming’s Maternal and Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) grant for 7 years, and she oversaw the evaluation of the Right from the Start teen parenting project funded by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Adolescent Health. In 2019, she worked with research partners to launch a randomized-controlled trial looking at the impact of Parents as Teachers.
Currently, Allison serves as a Co-Investigator on four National Institutes of Health grants collaborating with researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University. She has served on several national advisory groups including the Home Visiting Expert Consensus Panel through Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, the National Advisory Committee for the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting COVID Health Equity Research project, Home Visiting Evaluation Advisory Council with Tufts University, and the Public Health Advisory Committee for Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice.
Prior to coming to Parents as Teachers, Allison spent over a decade managing national, regional, state, and local research and evaluation projects at a research and consulting firm, Transtria, and Saint Louis University, School of Public Health. Her research topics have included maternal and child health, social determinants of health, childhood obesity prevention, health equity, partnership capacity, and health literacy. One notable research project Allison directed was a five-year evaluation of 49 communities in the United States, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to implement strategies to reduce childhood obesity. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from Saint Louis University, School of Public Health with a focus on Epidemiology and Behavioral Science.