LIFESTYLE MEDICINE TEAM

Jessica Hope, RN, MSN, WHNP

Research Scientist
Humane & Sustainable Food Lab, Quantitative Sciences Unit

Jessica Hope earned her undergraduate degree at Princeton University, where she rowed stroke seat on the women’s crew team for three years. Her first work in public health was for the Population Council, studying mifepristone acceptability, and for Princeton’s Office of Population Research, spreading awareness of the existence of emergency contraception. She completed her master’s at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing, and is certified as a women’s health nurse practitioner. In her 30s, she was the head nurse at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, a breastfeeding educator for Nursing Mothers Counsel, and a member of the board of Helping After Neonatal Death (H.A.N.D.) of the Peninsula.

At Stanford, Jessica conducted clinical research in nutrition both at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and in the Division of Immunology & Rheumatology. She is now a research scientist in the Humane & Sustainable Food Lab, an applied statistics group in the Quantitative Sciences Unit of the Department of Medicine, where she examines which behavioral and educational interventions help people choose to eat more plant foods. She has a particular interest in the public health consequences of corporate animal agriculture, and in how choice architecture affects food selection. The mother of two endurance athletes and wife of an athletic coach, she has been following a plant-based diet enthusiastically for nearly two decades.