SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Dr. Rashon Lane joins Sutter Health’s Institute for Advancing Health Equity team as a senior health equity scientist—the latest milestone in a clinical research career spanning more than 20 years.
“Dr. Lane is driven to place marginalized communities at the center of the research process with the aim of supporting equitable outcomes that foster justice and healing,” said Leon Clark, chief research & health equity officer at Sutter Health. “Her passion, experience and expertise are a great strength to our team that will help us with the goal of advancing health equity within our communities and beyond.”
In her new role, Dr. Lane will lead a portfolio of high-quality, original scientific research aimed at addressing health disparities, including cardiovascular disease prevention, mental health, program evaluation and implementation science.
Dr. Lane most recently served as a senior health scientist/behavioral health scientist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. While at the CDC, she served as an expert in the design and implementation of applied research and program evaluation. She also led research that applied to clinical interventions and health equity principles in public health programs.
While at CDC’s Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention, Dr. Lane was the principal investigator for the Grady Hospital Heart Failure Program evaluation. She assessed the integration of social determinants of health measures into electronic health records to successfully design health equity interventions and reduce hospital readmissions related to heart failure. During the CDC’s COVID-19 response in 2020, she served as lead for the Minority and Rural Health and Monitoring and Evaluation teams. Most recently, she was the principal investigator for behavioral and epidemiological studies on long-COVID and the team lead for the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative.
“As a native Californian born in the Bay Area, I feel a profound sense of gratitude knowing our work can benefit the diverse communities we serve through Sutter’s not-for-profit network,” said Dr. Lane. “Even more so, I’m energized to know our work also transcends our geographic footprint. The robust findings we generate and the new models we test can be shared and implemented widely, helping improve health equity on a national level.”
Dr. Lane completed her doctorate in medical sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. She also holds a master’s degree in social psychology and evaluation from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif., and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala.
