Ashton Johnson

Ashton Johnson is a public health professional with nearly 10 years of experience in the facilitation, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based practices and programs. Ms. Johnson is skilled in program and grant management, data collection and analysis, qualitative interviews, and budget management. 

She currently serves as a Project Management Specialist for two contracts funded by the Administration for Children & Families (ACF) that provide training and technical assistance to Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program and Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Program grantees. Ms. Johnson provides project management support to the Learning, Advancing, Understanding, Nurturing, and Collaborating Hub (Launch) Accelerator, a project funded through the Office of Populations Affairs’ (OPA’s) Teen Pregnancy Prevention program to support innovation teams working to reduce disparities in youth sexual health outcomes. 

She is also supporting RTI’s evaluation of the Safe Dates for Teen Mothers program, a healthy relationships curriculum adapted for use with pregnant and parenting teen mothers. The evaluation is part of an OPA award that seeks to identify effective interventions for preventing teen pregnancy and associated risk factors, including substance use, educational attainment, and intimate partner violence. In addition, Ms. Johnson serves as a qualitative interviewer for an implementation study on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

Prior to joining RTI in 2022, she worked at Granville Vance Public Health, where she supported the oversight and accountability of the Minority Diabetes Prevention Program across eight North Carolina counties. Mrs. Johnson also previously served as a Program Coordinator at Winston-Salem State University, during which she implemented the evidence-based “Draw the Line/Respect the Line” program to more than 300 middle school students in Southeastern North Carolina. 

She is a member of the American Public Health Association (APHA), Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE), and the Healthy Teen Network.