Gabriela Plasencia is a health policy researcher at RAND. Also a board-certified Family Medicine physician, her work bridges clinical practice, community engagement, and systems-level policy innovation. At RAND, she leads and contributes to mixed-methods and community-engaged research focused on improving health care access, delivery, and utilization.
Her research portfolio spans projects for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA). Plasencia’s work has informed federal and state strategies on Medicaid expansion, disability measurement in payment models, and nutrition and health behavior integration in value-based care.
As co-principal investigator of a community-based study in North Carolina, she leads efforts to train community health workers to improve health literacy and enrollment among eligible but uninsured individuals following Medicaid expansion. Her approach integrates qualitative, mixed-methods, and implementation methodologies to translate community insights into actionable policy recommendations.
Plasencia’s scholarship has been published in Health Affairs Forefront, The Milbank Quarterly, American Journal of Public Health, BMC Public Health, and the North Carolina Medical Journal, among others. Plasencia is a native Spanish speaker. She holds a Master of Applied Science in population health management from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a Doctor of Medicine from Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine, and a Bachelor of Science in psychology and microbiology from the University of Florida.
B.S. in psychology, University of Florida; B.S. in microbiology, University of Florida; M.A.S in population studies, Johns Hopkins University; M.D., Loyola University Chicago
Spanish
