Rachel Banawa currently works as a Research Associate at the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity at the George Washington University. She is an incoming Fall 2021 PhD student in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She previously worked at the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and interned at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Her broad research interests include improving mental health outcomes and addressing racial/ethnic health disparities, with a particular focus on the Asian-American and Pacific Islander population. She earned her MSPH from the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in May 2020.