Rachel Kulikoff, BA, MPH

MPH, University of Washington (2018)
BA, University of Chicago (2015)

I am a PhD candidate in the health management and policy and political science departments studying the politics of public health data. Within public health, I study health policy and politics; in political science my subfield is American Politics with a focus on bureaucratic politics. My work also engages with the science and technology studies, specifically, the sociology of quantification.

My dissertation project asks when and why governments produce high-quality data, describing the institutional conditions under which the quality of data produced by the government improves, declines, and remains stable. Other research has appeared in The Lancet, The Lancet Regional Health-Americas, Health Policy, and JAMA Pediatrics.

Previously, I worked at Public Health Madison & Dane County on the maternal and child health team and the COVID-19 data team, as an epidemiologist at the Cook County Department of Public Health, and as a modeler at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. I got my MPH in Global Health- Health Metrics at the University of Washington in 2018, and my undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago in 2015.

• Health politics and policy
• Infectious disease models
• Local governance
• Science and technology studies
• Big health data

Please see Google Scholar for a full list.

“Trump’s Second Presidency Begins: Evaluating Effects on the US Health System.” The Lancet Regional Health-Americas, 2025 (with Scott Greer, Holly Jarman, and Miranda Yaver).

“The Second Trump Administration: A Policy Analysis of Challenges and Opportunities for European Health Policymakers.” Health Policy, 2025 (with Scott Greer, Holly Jarman, Dimitra Panteli, Ewout van Ginneken, and Matthias Wismar).

“Identifying COVID-19 Outbreaks From Contact-Tracing Interview Forms for Public Health Departments: Development of a Natural Language Processing Pipeline” JIMR Public Heatlh and Surveillance, 2022 (with John Caskey, Iain L McConnell et al).

“Maternal Mortality Ratios in 2852 Chinese Counties, 1996–2015, and Achievement of Millennium Development Goal 5 in China: A Subnational Analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.” The Lancet, 2019 (with Juan Liang, Xiaohong Li, et al).

“Population and Fertility by Age and Sex for 195 Countries and Territories, 1950–2017: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.” The Lancet, 2018 (with Christopher Murray, Charlton Callender, et al).

“Global, Regional, and National under-5 Mortality, Adult Mortality, Age-Specific Mortality, and Life Expectancy, 1970–2016: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016.” The Lancet, 2017 (with GBD 2016 Mortality Collaborators).

“Health Metrics Priorities: A Perspective from Young Researchers.” The Lancet, 2016 (with Julia Morris, Grant Nguyen, et al).

Additional Websites: 

• Student Profile in Political Science (joint degree)

Affiliations:

• Public Health Awakened, steering committee member