Nikhil Rao

PhD Candidate in Health Policy (G4, Methods for Policy Research)

Nikhil Rao graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2021 with a BS in Public Health through the Department of Health Policy and Management and a second major in Psychology. Prior to beginning studies at Harvard, Nikhil worked as a research analyst in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center. There, he contributed to studies related to quality of care in Medicare and Medicaid, structural racism’s impact on health, and access to pharmaceutical treatment for opioid use disorder. Grounded in both health services research and social epidemiology, Nikhil’s research interests include behavioral health, criminal legal systems, and spatial methods. Their current work examines parental incarceration, connections between drug overdose and police violence, and the population health effects of state-level policing reforms.