Anita Chandra

Biography

Anita Chandra is a senior policy researcher and research department director of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences Department at the RAND Corporation, as well as a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her background is in public health, child and adolescent development, and community-based participatory research and program evaluation. She currently leads or co-leads studies on deployment and military families; community resilience and long-term disaster recovery; and child health and well-being. Throughout her career, Chandra has engaged community partners to consider cross-sector solutions for improving child and community well-being and to build evaluation capacity among community-based organizations. In this role, she led a community-wide pediatric needs assessment in Washington, D.C., and a school health program study focused on the integration of health and education. She has been involved in projects with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to examine community capacity in public health preparedness, and currently serves as the RAND PI of a large study of community resilience in Los Angeles County. Chandra has engaged community members, particularly young people, in program evaluation and in the translation and dissemination of research findings into community action. She develops projects in adolescent mental health to explore stigma as a barrier to mental health care-seeking and to understand issues of emotional wellness. She also conducted projects in sexual and reproductive health, such as monitoring and evaluation at reproductive health clinics and designing a provider toolkit on barriers to appropriate reproductive health services for teens.