Kim McCombs-Thornton, Ph.D., M.P.P.

Kim McCombs-Thornton has more than 30 years of experience leading, designing, and implementing evaluation research projects for early childhood and family support initiatives. She is an applied social scientist with expertise in quasi-experimental design, survey development, qualitative methods, and cost studies. She has been on leadership teams in multiple organizations serving children and families, using skills in collaboration, team facilitation, supervision, data-driven decision making, and strategic planning.

McCombs-Thornton is the principal investigator for several projects with the Parents as Teachers (PAT) National Center, each using propensity score matching techniques to better understand outcomes for families. She also works with the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Technical Assistance Resource Center to provide evaluation technical assistance to MIECHV awardees and was team lead for the Family-Level Assessment and State of Home Visiting qualitative study on family engagement in home visiting. She is deputy director for HealthySteps research and implementation support projects and previously led the HealthySteps process evaluation.

Before joining JBA, McCombs-Thornton was the research and evaluation director for North Carolina Smart Start, where she oversaw 10 multiyear evaluations of child health and family support initiatives serving a wide range of communities across the state. Prior to that, she was principal investigator for a mixed-methods evaluation of the ZERO TO THREE Safe Babies Court Teams, earning the initiative promising status from the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare.

McCombs-Thornton received an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in public health from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.