Anita Chandra

Anita Chandra (she/her) is vice president and director of RAND Social and Economic Well-Being and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. The division manages RAND's Center to Advance Racial Equity Policy as well as other Centers on climate, housing, drug policy, policing, and civil justice. She leads studies on civic well-being and community planning; disaster response and resilience; public health emergency preparedness; health and health equity; child health and development, and effects of military deployment on families.

Throughout her career, Chandra has engaged government and nongovernmental partners to consider cross-sector solutions for improving community well-being and to build more robust systems, implementation, and evaluation capacity. This work has taken many forms, including engaging with federal and local government agencies on building systems for emergency preparedness and resilience both in the United States and globally; partnering with private sector organizations to develop the science base around child systems; and collaborating with city governments and foundations to modernize data systems and measure environmental sustainability, well-being, and civic transformation. Chandra has also partnered with community organizations to conduct broad-scale health and environmental needs assessments, to examine the integration of health and human service systems, and to determine how to integrate equity and address the needs of historically marginalized populations in human service systems. These projects have occurred in partnership with businesses, foundations, and other community organizations. Chandra earned a Dr.P.H. in population and family health sciences from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.