Shadi Houshyar

Shadi Houshyar is Director of Health Justice Policy at CSSP where she works to advance policies that promote health and wellbeing for children and families, centering Black, Latine, Indigenous, and immigrant children and families, and other populations often marginalized or harmed by systems and policies. Shadi has over 20 years of experience in child and family policy. She provides technical assistance to states and jurisdictions seeking to promote health and wellbeing 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 health and wellbeing for children. Shadi also has experience working on federal child welfare policy. 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 on health, education, and disability policy. Shadi received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Yale University.