Rachel Nugent joins RTI International as vice president of chronic noncommunicable diseases initiative

SEATTLE – Rachel Nugent, Ph.D., will join RTI International as vice president of its new Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases Global Initiative in February.  

Nugent is a world-renowned expert in global noncommunicable diseases and has more than 30 years of experience in global development as a researcher, practitioner and policy advisor to governments.

At RTI, she will lead a team to address the large and growing burden of noncommunicable diseases in low and middle income countries. Her team will work with countries to provide policy analysis, guidance and scale-up implementation of cost-effective strategies for noncommunicable disease detection, prevention and control, and will generate new evidence to guide global and national decision-making to reduce the burden of noncommunicable diseases.

She will be based in Seattle.

RTI brings wide range of capabilities to this effort, including health communication and behavior change, health care economics, epidemiology, biomarker research, disease surveillance and registries as well as medical product development.

"We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Nugent, a distinguished thought leader in the noncommunicable diseases field, to RTI's global health team," said Aaron Williams, executive vice president at RTI. "Rachel's work and experience on this increasingly important issue will ultimately help reduce premature mortality from these diseases."

Nugent is currently an associate professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington and principal investigator for the Disease Control Priorities Network. In her new role at RTI, Nugent will maintain a strong collaboration with these organizations and their important work addressing noncommunicable diseases globally.   

In addition to her research contributions, she has advised the World Health Organization, the U.S. Government, corporations, foundations, and non-profit organizations on the economics and policy environment of noncommunicable diseases.

Nugent is a member of the International Expert Group for the Global Nutrition Report, the Lancet Commission on Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries of the Poorest Billion, and the Institute of Medicine Committee on Economic Evaluation, and works with the World Health Organization Global Coordination Mechanism Working Group on Noncommunicable Disease Financing. 

She also is on the External Advisory Committee of the NCD Alliance, Children's Heartlink, and the boards of other global and regional health and nutrition advocacy organizations. She was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on the Cardiovascular Disease Epidemic in Developing Countries, the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Chronic Diseases and Well-Being, and a contributor to the Disease Control Priorities Project in Developing Countries, published in 2006. 

She was formerly deputy director of Global Health at the Center for Global Development, director of Health and Economics at the Population Reference Bureau, program director of Health and Economics Programs at the Fogarty International Center of NIH, and senior economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 

She earned masters and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the George Washington University.