Rebecca Johnson, MA, MPH is an applied medical anthropologist and public health social behavioral scientist passionate about birth equity, reproductive justice, gender inclusive perinatal care, and the midwifery model of care. She joined the Institute for Medicaid Innovation (IMI) in 2021 and now serves as a program manager. At IMI, she supports programs primarily within the perinatal health portfolio with an emphasis on community, equity, and the social determinants of health. Rebecca leads the implementation of the national Medicaid and Midwifery Learning Collaborative, a three-year initiative of five state-based teams, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In 2023, Rebecca led the development of a dataset, accompanied by interactive maps and funded by the Commonwealth Fund, of 23 perinatal health policies for the 50 states and D.C. in order to inform a range of stakeholders and interested parties influencing policymaking at the national, state, and community levels. She supported data collection and analysis for a national survey on women, gender, and maternal health priority topics in Medicaid, which directly shaped the focus of the 2023 Maternal Health Policy Equity Summit. Rebecca also serves as the inaugural chair of IMI’s internal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice committee, launched in 2022.
Rebecca earned both her Master of Arts in applied medical anthropology and her Master of Public Health concentrating in social behavioral sciences from the University of Memphis. There, she served as president of the Public Health Student Association and was awarded as the Public Health Community Scholar in 2019. Previously, among other research positions, Rebecca was a clinical research examiner in a longitudinal mother-child dyad study at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and a data systems analyst in an IT command center for FedEx Services.