Rachel Cassidy is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Bern and Swiss Institute for Translational and Entrepreneurial Medicine (sitem-insel AG), and honorary Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
She has a background in health systems and policy research, using complexity science approaches to explore research questions in the fields of communicable, non-communicable disease and maternal and child health. Rachel currently co-leads a three-year project ‘Knowledge generation during times of crisis: modelling to inform policy’ funded by the Multidisciplinary Center for Infectious Diseases, which is exploring how mathematical models are used as a tool to support decision-making, and the extent to which crisis-relevant models are trusted and understood by diverse stakeholder groups. She is also engaged in Screen4Care, a five-year project funded by Innovative Medicines Initiative with goal to shorten the path to rare disease diagnosis by using newborn genetic screening and digital technologies. Rachel co-leads a task concerned with preliminary evidence on the economic evaluation of genetic newborn screening programmes for rare disease.
Prior to her position at University of Bern, Rachel held research positions at Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London. Rachel has a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The thesis describes a body of work where Rachel used causal loop diagrams and system dynamics modelling to investigate health system strengthening in low-resource settings, with aim to optimise the effect of interventions that target maternal and child health service delivery. Rachel holds a MSc in Epidemiology and a MSc in Bioinformatics and Theoretical Systems Biology from Imperial College, London.
