Ana Pereda

Ana Pereda was a MS Health Metrics and Evaluation student at the University of Washington. She received her undergraduate degree in Nutrition Sciences (BS) and minors in Global Public Health and Global Poverty and Practice from the University of California at Berkeley. Ana is devoted to participating in global health discussions, research, and programming. She has worked in food and nutrition security in her home country of Venezuela, at an organization that has served over 10 million meals to children that are food insecure. After completing her undergraduate studies, she joined a local non-profit in the San Francisco Bay area, working on nutrition insecurity. In this role she designed, implemented and evaluated produce prescription programs for food insecure and at-risk of diet related chronic disease populations. She also worked with medical providers to design workflows that can be scaled and become reimbursable by insurance companies. Ana is passionate about using technology and data to guide public health initiatives, and including local leadership in the implementation of solutions. Through the START Center, Ana is eager to dive into data and research to inform global health programming. Her interest includes children malnutrition, social determinants of health, and global development.

Ana worked on five projects during her time with START, acting as the Project Manager for one of them. Below are highlights from two of the projects Ana worked on:

• Advancing Equity and UHNW Philanthropy: The START team conducted key informant interviews and literature review in order to recommend definitions for three core types of equity giving: racial, gender, and SDG-aligned; the team also presented adaptations of these definitions for the India and China geographies, as well as an assessment of where in the philanthropic lifecycle the proposed definitions should be used and measured against.
• Case Study Analysis of Food Fortification Compliance Systems in Latin America: The Nutrition PST at the Foundation engaged with the START Center to build three narrative case studies existing national food fortification programs in Chile, Costa Rica, and/or Guatemala to identify successful archetypes in monitoring and sustaining adequate levels of fortification, and a regional stakeholder analysis to understand regional support of fortification and how it impacts national programs.
  

Reflecting on her time at START, Ana said,  “My time at START was such a big part of my graduate school experience. I learned a lot about managing client relations, time management and teamwork. From the beginning I was excited to participate in diverse research projects, but I never imagined I was going to learn so much in just one year. However, I think the most special part is the community, the people at START are passionate and driven. It was very easy to connect and form cohesive teams and friends. I leave with a bag full of skills and ready to continue my journey as a public health practitioner.”

Currently, Ana is a Researcher at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.