Editor’s Note: McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Home Care and McKnight’s Senior Living are profiling the McKnight’s 2024 Pinnacle Awards honorees daily in April and May. For additional McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards content, visit this page.

Improving the delivery of quality care in behavioral health programs has been a priority for Jessica Fear for more than a quarter of a century. Fear advocates for the use of data to inform and identify long-term solutions. 

She also advocates for greater use of data to inform and identify long-term solutions at all levels of government. She constantly asks, “How can behavioral health care be more accessible for all?” 

In 2011, she helped launch VNS Health’s Health Home program, which supports low-income clients with complex chronic mental health and co-occurring medical conditions. She worked for VNS from 2004 to 2014 in its Visiting Nurse Service of New York, where she rose from division manager of community mental health services to the director of children’s services. 

She then transitioned to Healthfirst, which provides no- and low-cost health insurance in New York City and five surrounding counties. There, she began as the director of business operations, behavioral health before rising to vice president of behavioral health services. 

She returned to VNS Health in May 2021 as senior vice president of behavioral health, overseeing the expansion of service to more people with behavioral health conditions and ensuring VNS Health grows in a financially sustainable way. 

Fear testified last year before New York City Council’s Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities and Addictions on the need to expand the capacity of new and existing mental health programs, an act that helped VNS Health secure additional city funding for programs like the geriatric mental health program. 

  • Fear once was director of the San Francisco YMCA. 
  • She holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of San Francisco and an undergraduate degree in Social Ecology from the University of California–Irvine. 
  • She helped VNS secure $4 million to open a certified community behavioral health clinic in the South Bronx, one of only 121 organizations nationally to receive funding as part of the White House’s Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics.

The McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards program is jointly administered by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News, McKnight’s Senior Living and McKnight’s Home Care. Honorees were recognized March 21 at a dinner and awards ceremony in Chicago. Omnicare was the Silver sponsor for the 2024 Pinnacle Awards program. Parker Health Group and Sentrics were event sponsors.