Dr. Rachel R Hardeman
Dr. Rachel R Hardeman
EVIDENCE & IMAGINATION
For more than a decade, my work made structural racism visible in health data.
I did not study race as a risk factor. I studied racism as a system.
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Across reproductive justice, racial concordance, and structural racism measurement, my scholarship helped establish what many communities already knew: anti-Black racism is structural, measurable, and consequential.
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But measurement was never the end goal. It was the beginning.
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I was trained to analyze systems. I chose to redesign them.
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Today, that evidence forms the foundation for building systems rooted in imagination, design, and liberation.
Making the Invisible Visible
Abortion Access as
a Racial Justice
Kozhimannil KB, Hassan A, & Hardeman RR.
Published September 7, 2022
N Engl J Med 2022;387:1537-1539
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp2209737
VOL. 387 NO. 1
These works established racism as a structural driver of health inequity — transforming what was often treated as anecdotal into measurable, undeniable evidence.
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Reproductive Justice & Structural Racism
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This work demonstrated that racism — not race — drives maternal and infant health inequities, reshaping national conversations about accountability in medicine and public health.
Improving the Measurement of Structural Racism to Achieve Antiracist Health Policy
Hardeman RR, Homan P, Chantarat TB, Davis B, & Brown T.
Health Affairs; February 2022, 41(2).
Racial Concordance & Life Outcomes
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This research examined how racial dynamics within healthcare settings influence survival and life outcomes — challenging the assumption that medicine operates neutrally across difference.
Community-Centered Care & Autonomy
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In partnership with community institutions like Roots Community Birth Center in North Minneapolis — one of only five Black-owned freestanding birth centers in the United States — this work grounded research in lived experience, ensuring that data never drifted from community truth.
The Impact of Culturally-Centered Care on Peripartum Experiences of Autonomy and Respect in Community Birth Centers: A Comparative Study.
Almanza JI, Karbeah J, Tessier KM, Neerland C, Stoll K, Hardeman RR, & Vedam S.
Maternal and Child Health Journal, 20.
Published: 24 November 2021
Volume 26, pages 895–904, (2022)
The Imagination Wall
Once harm is measured clearly, the question shifts.
What becomes possible?
Imagine a world where:
"A positive pregnancy test doesn’t elicit fear and confusion and rather presents itself with Choices and access"
"A pregnant person is not fearful of the outcome of their pregnancy nor worried about how they will be treated when accessing the health care system"
"Lack of Racial concordance isn’t a matter of life and death"
"We are invested in to making the invisible visible by measuring structural racism"
The research you see here forms the intellectual foundation for Neural Liberation Architecture™ and the broader Dreaming Beyond ecosystem.
The early work asked: How does racism harm?
The work I am building now asks: How do we design systems that heal?
Because once systems are exposed, neutrality is no longer an option.
We must build differently.
From Measurement to Architecture
"Research is not a record of what was.
It is a blueprint for what can be built next."​
RACHEL HARDEMAN, PHD, MPH