About
Rachel joined the Center for Indigenous Health in November of 2021 as a Research Associate at the Great Lakes Hub in Duluth, MN. She currently serves as Data Manager for the Healing Pathways and and Gii’igoshimong studies. She also supports the IndigeFit study, the CIRCLE: Ending Substance Use Harms project, and the Native Collective Research Effort to Enhance Wellness (N CREW) program.
Rachel is committed to working in partnership with Indigenous communities to achieve health equity, with a focus on culture, resilience, and the social determinants of health. She prefers to use community-based participatory research, social epidemiology, and mixed methods approaches that make space for diverse ways of knowing, as well as analyses that encompass a range of individual, interpersonal, community, environmental, structural, and historical influences on health.
Rachel received her MPH in epidemiology from the Colorado School of Public Health in 2020. Rachel’s areas of research interest include food systems and food sovereignty; diabetes prevention and management; substance use prevention and treatment; rural health; and the built environment. Outside of work, Rachel enjoys gardening, baking, hiking, and playing the mandolin.