Abhigna Rao, B.A.
Student Research AssistantAbacus Evaluation in the Center for Health Equity Research |
Graduate Research AssistantGrantLab in the School of Medicine Center for Aging & Health |
Chief of StaffUNC Graduate & Professional Student Government |
Abhigna Rao is a Student Research Assistant with Abacus Evaluation at the UNC Center for Health Equity Research and is pursuing her MPH in Health Behavior from the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She also serves as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Center for Aging and Health in the UNC School of Medicine studying health disparities in cancer care access among aging populations.
Rao earned her Honors Bachelor of Arts in Interpersonal Communication from the University of Delaware. While there, she contributed to multiple evaluation projects at the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP at UD) and wrote her undergraduate thesis on student experiences and priorities in settings of higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was later published in the Delaware Journal of Public Health.
At a high level, she is passionate about program implementation, evaluation, and qualitative research, and hopes to apply those to areas of health literacy, women’s and family health, and cross-cultural inequities.
CONTACTS
HEALTH EQUITY FOCUS
Chronic Disease Education Health Disparities Social determinants of health Women's healthKEY PROJECTS
- Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) | Managing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has not only demanded extreme efforts from clinical and public health systems, but has also revealed where our systems of care are most challenged and fall short of our standards. The objective of the PHIG initiative is to strengthen the infrastructure of healthcare workforces across the United States so that we can ensure the availability and accessibility of health providers and services to meet and maintain the needs of all Americans. My current role on involved teams includes assessing stakeholders, constructing data visualizations and analyzing secondary qualitative data.