Shadi Houshyar is Director of Health Justice Policy at CSSP where she is focused on advancing anti-racist policies that promote health and wellbeing for Black, Latine, and Indigenous children and families, and other populations often marginalized or harmed by our systems, policies, and practices. Shadi has expertise in child and family health policy and child welfare policy. She provides technical assistance to states and jurisdictions seeking to advance health justice for children, youth, and families, and is involved in several capacity building efforts with national and local partners and philanthropic organizations seeking to advance racial and health justice.
Prior to joining CSSP, Shadi served as the Director of Early Childhood and Child Welfare Initiatives at Families USA, a national health care advocacy organization. In this role, she led policy development on the national and state-level aimed at leveraging health systems to promote the healthy development of children and advance equity in childhood. Shadi also has experience working on federal child welfare policy, with a focus on developing policies that advance equity and promote better results for children, youth, and families. This includes serving as Vice President for Child Welfare Policy at First Focus, a national bipartisan children’s advocacy organization, and Director of First Focus’s State Policy Advocacy and Reform Center (SPARC), a national resource center for state-based advocates, aimed at improving outcomes for children and families involved with the child welfare system by building the capacity of, and connections between, state child welfare advocates. Shadi has also served as an AAAS/SRCD Congressional Fellow working on health, education, and disability policy and other issues within the jurisdiction of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Shadi received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Yale University.