Promoting Latinx health equity through community-engaged policy and practice reforms in North Carolina.

Andrea Thoumi, MPP, MSc is the Health Equity Policy Fellow and Core Faculty Member at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy. In this capacity, she advances the Center’s aim to enhance policy analysis, research, and education in health equity.  Her research interests include health policies to mitigate structural and social determinants of health that lead to health inequities among Latine communities in the US and among people accessing reproductive health prevention, screening, and treatment. She also serves as an instructor on Bass Connections courses and is a research collaborator with the Latinx Advocacy Team & Interdisciplinary Network for COVID-19 (LATIN-19), Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics-Underserved Populations (RADx-UP), and Women-Inspired Strategies for Healthcare (WISH). She is the recipient of AcademyHealth’s Disparities Interest Group Early-Stage Distinguished Investigator Award (2021) for her leadership, mentorship, and research and recipient of the Duke Presidential Award (2020) for exceptional service to the Duke community as a LATIN-19 team member.

Andrea combines expertise in health policy, health financing, health equity, and community health. Previously, she oversaw Duke-Margolis’s global health portfolio spanning value-based care, universal health coverage, primary health care, reproductive health and innovations to increase access to health services. Prior to Duke, Andrea was a Research Associate at the Brookings Institution, managing research on global accountable care and alternative payment models for oncology and diabetes. Previously, she worked as a Senior Analyst at Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), conducting monitoring and evaluation for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria HIV/AIDS programs in Argentina and Belize. Andrea has also consulted for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization, and the World Bank on health equity, financial protection, and health innovation. She holds a Master in Public Policy from Georgetown University, an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and BA in Community Health and International Relations from Tufts University.  

Health Disparities, Access to Health Care, Women's Health, Latino Health Care, Chronic Disease Management, Socioeconomic Determinants of Health. Population Health.

Rushina Cholera, MD, PhD is a pediatrician and epidemiologist in the Division of General Pediatrics with appointments at the Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy and the Duke Department of Population Health Sciences. Her research and health policy work focus on understanding unmet social needs and identifying optimal approaches for social and health care sector integration to promote health and health equity for children and families. Dr. Cholera aims to design and implement cross-sector, community-engaged, and scalable interventions to improve child health disparities across the clinical practice and health policy levels. She draws on interdisciplinary mixed-methods research approaches leveraging her expertise in epidemiology, community-based participatory research, and implementation science.

Dr. Cholera completed both her MD and PhD in Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her pediatrics residency at UNC Chapel Hill and was then a National Clinician Scholar at Duke University. She is currently the Director of Research and Evaluation for the NC Integrated Care for Kids model, a CMS-funded pilot demonstration project to develop and implement a locally integrated health care service delivery and payment model for Medicaid/CHIP insured children in NC. She also directs the health behaviors and needs research pillar within the Duke Children’s Health & Discovery Initiative.