Rachel haggard

program coordinator & data scientist

While I have followed an unconventional trajectory, beginning with working in sustainable agriculture and global food insecurity, to focusing on HIV and global health, one common thread has been data use and analysis. My passion is understanding and addressing global inequities, and using data to inform decision-making at subnational and national levels.

Prior to joining Cooper/Smith, I worked at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) on the global Pediatric HIV and eMTCT team as an Analytics and M&E Associate. This position allowed me to work across six Sub-Saharan African countries, creating data systems and tools to improve the monitoring and evaluation of ongoing programs. In this role I developed statistical models to evaluate the effectiveness of various differentiated service delivery models and the impact on HIV service disruption and delivery, quality of care, ART adherence and viral load suppression, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. I supported Ministries of Health to create data dashboards to more effectively aggregate, monitor, and evaluate a variety of HIV-related indicators and ensure sustainability of ongoing programming.

Prior to CHAI, I was a Global Health Corps fellow and worked as a Senior Research Associate/Research Capacity Building Officer for the National Health Research Authority under the Ministry of Health in Zambia. I supported the Zambia Health Services Improvement Project, in partnership with the World Bank. This project required protocol development, analysis, and results dissemination demonstrating improvements in health care service delivery related to Results Based Financing and Pre-Service and In-Service health care worker trainings to reach the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals.

I received a BS in Sustainable Agriculture, with an emphasis in Agricultural Economics from the University of Missouri and a MA in Sociology, with an Interdisciplinary Applied Statistics Minor from the University of Mississippi.