Associate Director for Center Health and Humanitarian Systems
Education
- Ph.D. City & Regional Planning (2016), Georgia Tech
- M.S. Geographic Information Systems & Technology (2016), Georgia Tech
- MLA Landscape Architecture (2002), The Pennsylvania State University
- B.Arch Architecture (1999), Bangalore University
About
Arthi Rao is the Associate Director at the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems (CHHS) and a Senior Research Scientist in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Arthi provides educational program leadership (especially maintenance and expansion of the Health and Humanitarian Supply Chain Management certificate), teaching within ISyE, and strategic development of CHHS's research portfolio including proposal development support and identifying interdisciplinary synergies. She also manages the Health and Wellbeing of People and Communities Initiative, a cross-campus, interdisciplinary research effort. Prior to joining ISyE, Arthi was the Associate Director of the Center for Uran Resilience and Analytics in the College of Design at Georgia Tech.
Research
Arthi has had a consistent focus on Health and Place research throughout her career, supported by her interdisciplinary educational and professional background in Urban Planning, Epidemiology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Her research is informed by conceptual and methodological frameworks from Social/Landscape Epidemiology, Urban Planning and Landscape Ecology. Her research interests focus on social determinants of health, healthcare access, healthy communities, and spatial methods. Her research background and skills in spatial modeling, data visualization, multilevel modeling, and other predictive modeling techniques, complements CHHS's approach to creating healthy and resilient communities. She works with a broad group of collaborators including systems engineers, clinician researchers, biostatisticians, and epidemiologists to develop research and tools to investigate the impact of geography on health, access, and well-being. As a health and place researcher, she has investigated the impact of contextual (neighborhood) impacts on various health outcomes. As a geospatial research scientist, she has built interactive, decision-support tools to inform organizational decision-making and resource allocation for public health organizations as well as local communities. Her work has been funded by federal agencies such as NSF, Administration for Children and Families (ACF), and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) as well as state agencies such as GDOT and the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (PIN).
Teaching
Dr. Rao teaches courses titled “Public Health and the Built Environment” and “Public Health Analytics” at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Her courses teach concepts and methods used in healthy communities’ research and practice, encompassed within a comprehensive socioecological framework. They are also listed as electives on the Social Determinants of Health certificate offered by The Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
Representative Publications
- Bolar, C., Smith, N., Rao, A., Cooper, A.,et al. The Impact of Parental Socioeconomic Characteristics and Engagement on Children's Early Academic Abilities: The Role of Racial and Economic Disparities. Frontiers in Psychology, section Human Developmental Psychology (Accepted).
- Sun, W., Wang, L., Rao, A., Yim, S., Kan, H., Gao, Y., Zhang, S., Ross, C., Bao, P. (2024). Detecting thresholds in the health impact of the urban built environment. Journal of Applied Geography, 171: 103399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2024.103399.
- Ross, C., Rao, A., Yoo, C. (2023). Megaregions and COVID-19: a call for innovative governing structure. Regional Studies, doi: 10.1080/00343404.2023.2183946. (IF 2022- 4.6)
- Gaglioti, A., Li, C., Baltrus, P., She, Z., Douglas, M., Moore, M., Rao, A., Immergluck, L., Ayer, T., Bazemore, A., Rust, G., Mack, D. (2023). Interpersonal Primary Care Continuity for Chronic Conditions is Associated with Fewer Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits Among Medicaid Enrollees. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, vol.36, no. 2, pp. 303-312. doi:10.3122/jabfm.2022.220015R1. (IF 2022- 3.0)
- She, Z., Gaglioti, A. H., Baltrus, P., Li, C., Moore, M. A., Immergluck, L. C., Rao, A., & Ayer, T., “Primary Care Comprehensiveness and Care Coordination in Robust Specialist Networks Results in Lower Emergency Department Utilization: A Network Analysis of Medicaid Physician Networks,” Journal of Primary Care & Community Health, vol. 11, Jan-Dec 2020 2150132720924432. https://doi.org/10.1177/2150132720924432.
- Leach, C.R., Vereen, R., Rao, A., Ross, K., & Diefenbach, M., “Impact of Individual and Area Level Race/Ethnicity on Illness Intrusiveness among Cancer Survivors,” Translational Behavioral Medicine, vol.9, no. 6, pp. 1208-1215, Dec 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/tbm/ibz088.