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Ashani Johnson-Turbes

Pronouns: She/Her

Vice President
Ashani leads NORC’s Center on Equity Research, and serves as a researcher in NORC’s Center for Health Communication Science.

Ashani is a vice president and first ever director of NORC’s Center on Equity Research (CER).

Ashani is an experienced and award-winning social scientist with over 20 years conducting inclusive and equitable research, health communication, social marketing, public health, and public policy research, including rigorous evaluation of communication messages, campaigns, and initiatives to promote health equity. She blends her academic background in political science, political behavior, and public policy with years of work in health policy, public health, health marketing, communication, and evaluation. Ashani has expertise in participatory and deliberative models for engagement, engaging and recruiting marginalized/minoritized populations, culturally responsive and mixed methods research and evaluation. She presents her work at national conferences, is published in peer reviewed journals, and is a sought after thought leader and public speaker.

Ashani returned to NORC after serving as the Global Impact Team, Director of Public Policy Research and Monitoring, in McDonald’s Global Public Policy and Government Relations Center of Excellence. At McDonald’s, she led strategic planning to build McDonald’s public policy research function and was advisor to cross-functional, company teams leading Environmental Sustainability, Community Connection and Diversity promotion activities. While at McDonald’s she also directed social and traditional media monitoring and analysis, reputational risk and brand promotion research, campaign monitoring and measurement.

Ashani holds degrees from Hampton and Purdue University with continued studies on quantitative methods at the University of Michigan, and political science at Leiden University and the University of Chicago. She is adjunct faculty at Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health, and the President of the Society for Health Communication. She also serves on the Board for BLKHLTH and on the CDC’s Communications and Public Engagement Workgroup (CPEW), advising the Federal Advisory Committee to the Director, CDC, on communication with the public.

Project Contributions

Improving HIV Health Outcomes for Black Men Who Have Sex with Men

Evaluating clinical care and behavioral health support services for Black MSM with HIV

Funder:

Health Resources and Services Administration

How Right Now / Qué Hacer Ahora

A communication initiative to increase people’s resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Foundation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Culturally Responsive Vaccination Communication Skills and Techniques

Developing evidence-based interventions to improve provider communication with racial and ethnic minority patients

Funder:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Evaluating CDC’s Approaches to Enhancing Adult Immunization Uptake

A culturally responsive evaluation of CDC’s efforts to boost adult immunization uptake and advance equity

Client:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Evaluation Training and Technical Assistance Center (ETAC)

Evaluation training, TA, and rigorous evaluations for DoD sexual assault prevention activities

Client:

Department of Defense (DoD)

Evaluation and Learning Partner for the Corporate Coalition

Using inclusive and equitable research methods to inform community-building investment initiatives

Client:

The Corporate Coalition of Chicago

BLAAC PD Study Recruitment and Engagement Support

Technical assistance for efforts to transform the understanding of Parkinson’s genetics

Funder:

Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP)

UCLA Data Equity Center Technical Assistance

Supporting collection, imputation, weighting, analysis, and dissemination of data to promote health equity

Client:

University of California, Los Angeles, Data Equity Center

Developing a Supervised Model of Online COVID Vaccine Information

Examining AI biases in model development to accurately detect and classify online COVID-19 vaccine information

Client:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)