Heather Gomez-Bendaña

Heather Gomez-Bendaña (she/her/ella) is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research interests include social determinants of health, health care access, health disparities, health care quality, academic achievement gaps, education policy, education equity, and disadvantaged students.

Prior to joining Pardee RAND, she was a program coordinator at the Green Family Foundation Neighborhood Health Education Learning Program at Florida International University, where she helped design and evaluate evidence-based health promotion programs and facilitated a pilot project on care management for pediatric asthmatic children. Before that, she was a high school biology and mathematics teacher in Hialeah, Florida. She has an M.P.H. from Florida International University with a specialization in health promotion and disease prevention, and a B.S. in biology from Florida State University.