Dr. Rachel Hardeman PhD, MPH

About Me

I am a tenured Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy & Management at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, the Blue Cross Endowed Professor in Health and Racial Equity, and the Founding Director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity (CARHE, pronounced "care"), and a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the CDC. As racial health equity researcher, I study a critical and complex determinant of health inequity—racism. My work contributes to a body of knowledge that links structural racism to health in tangible ways, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist.

I leverage the frameworks of critical race theory and Reproductive Justice to inform my equity-centered work, which aims to build empirical evidence of racism’s impact on health. My published work has elicited important conversations on the topics of culturally-centered care, police brutality, and structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities.

I have received several awards for my work as an early career investigator including the Dr. Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award from the University of Minnesota (2019) the 2020 recipient of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASSPH) Early Career Public Health Research Award. I was recently named a McKnight Presidential Fellow awarded for excellence in research and scholarship, leadership and recently received the AcademyHealth Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award for the impact my research has had on health policy.

I am also active locally and nationally with organizations that seek to achieve health equity such as the Minnesota Maternal Mortality Review Committee and the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood of the North Central States. As part of the CARHE mission of narrative change, I am building a growing media presence, with national media highlights including being featured in the New York Times, appearing on NBCLX and CBS News, and giving extensive interviews for MPR News and podcasts like The Dose. And in 2024, I was honored to be named to TIME's 2024 TIME100 list of 100 most influential people in the world.

I earned my BS in Chemistry and Spanish from the Xavier University of Louisiana, my MPH in Public Health Administration & Policy, and a PhD in Health Services Research & Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.