Rana is a public health senior leader with deep experience in community engagement, research and program management, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and equity and inclusion initiatives. She is a strategic thinker with strong communication, team building, and organizational skills. She strives to be an ally deeply committed to dismantling White Supremacy and challenging racist and patriarchal structures to create just workspaces.
She is currently Associate Director for the Community Engagement Program, the Research Action Group for Equity (RAGE), and the Impacting Policy and Practice Through Accelerating Translation (IMPACT) program at UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). She is also a Director for the School of Medicine's Differences Matter Initiative, focusing on diversifying science and medicine.
Prior to joining CTSI to lead structural change initiatives to ensure that the research done by the University advances health equity, Rana was Senior Project Director at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a research group focused on social science research on abortion and contraception. Rana co-directed the Turnaway Study, featured in the book The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having--Or Being Denied--An Abortion, and oversaw a range of studies on the safety and acceptability of alternative methods of provision of medication abortion. She also led ANSIRH’s first anti-racism initiative aimed at changing the recruitment and hiring processes and was a longtime member of the OB/GYN Department’s DEI Committee.
Before coming to UCSF, Rana worked in teen sexual health, and in international health and human rights and maternal mortality reduction at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She has an MPH in population and family health from Columbia and a BA in French and Political Science from Drew University in New Jersey. Rana is a periodic contributor on reproductive health and abortion to Rewire, has appeared on KQED’s Perspectives, and loves to travel.
Her expertise lies in translating research for advocacy, designing and implementing rigorous qualitative and quantitative research, budget development and oversight, and building trust to support diverse and inclusive teams.