Rachel Hardeman
Mailing Address:

420 Delaware St SE
MMC 729 Mayo
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Rachel Hardeman, PhD, MPH

Professor and Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity, Division of Health Policy & Management

Titles

Director, Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity

Education

PhD, Health Policy & Management, University of Minnesota, 2013
MPH, Health Policy & Management, University of Minnesota, 2007
BS, Chemistry and Spanish, Xavier University of Louisiana, 2002

Summary

For media inquiries, contact: Keelia Silvis, [email protected]
For speaking engagements, contact: Camry Wilborn of CCMNT Speakers, [email protected]
For interested students, please fill out the CARHE student interest form.

Dr. Rachel R. Hardeman is a reproductive health equity researcher whose program of research applies the tools of population health science and health services research to elucidate a critical and complex determinant of health inequity—racism. Dr. Hardeman leverages the frameworks of critical race theory and reproductive justice to inform her equity-centered work which aims to build the empirical evidence of racism’s impact on health particularly for Black birthing people and their babies. In 2020, she was named the first Blue Cross Endowed Professor of Health and Racial Equity.

Dr. Hardeman’s research includes a partnership with Roots Community Birth Center, in North Minneapolis, one of five Black-owned freestanding birth centers in the United States. Her work also examines the potential mental health impacts for Black birthing people when living in a community that has experienced the killing of an unarmed Black person by police. Dr. Hardeman is principal investigator of MORhELab, which explores and defines ways to measure structural racism for the purposes of empirical, quantitative investigation. 

Published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, Dr. Hardeman’s research has elicited important conversations on the topics of culturally-centered care, police brutality and structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities. Her overarching goal is to contribute to a body of knowledge that links structural racism to health in a tangible way, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist.

Dr. Hardeman is active locally and nationally with organizations that seek to achieve health equity. She was recently appointed to the Minnesota Maternal Mortality Review Committee and the CDC Maternal Mortality Review Information Application (MMRIA) Bias work group where she is working to develop a measure of structural racism to be included when reviewing maternal deaths. Dr. Hardeman also serves on the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood of the North Central States.

Expertise

Maternal and child health, sexual and reproductive health, health equity, structural racism, population health, medical education.

Awards and Recognition

  • Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award, 2019
  • Best Poster award Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences (IAPHS), 2019
  • NIH Health Disparities Loan Repayment Program, funded by National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), 2018-2020
  • John A. Benson Jr., Professionalism Article Prize, American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, 2017
  • Best Research Paper Association for Medical Education (AMEE) Conference, 2016 Barcelona, Spain
  • NIH Health Disparities Loan Repayment Program funded by National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2016-2019
  • Health Affairs Most Read Blog Post of 2015 (Having a doula would make it better. How Medicaid coverage for doula care could improve birth outcomes, reduce health care costs, and improve equity) 2015

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