Rekha Varghese

Rekha Varghese is a managing researcher and deputy lead for the Evaluation, Methods and Analytics Program Area of the AIR Health Division. She is a health economist with more than 20 years of experience in domestic and international program evaluation and policy analysis. She has subject matter expertise in Medicare and Medicaid populations, mental health and substance use disorders, maternal and child health, chronic disease management and prevention, long-term care supports and services to older adults, health care quality and performance measurement, and health care payment and delivery models. Dr. Varghese has held leadership positions on projects for multiple federal government agencies, such as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Administration for Community Living, Office on Women’s Health, and Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. She directs the operations contract for the CMS ESRD Treatment Choices Model and the Evaluation of District of Columbia’s Medicaid Section 1115(a) Waiver Demonstration.

Dr. Varghese is experienced in every aspect of implementing mixed methods program evaluations, beginning with evaluation design to data analysis using advanced econometrics. She has conducted several impact evaluations for CMS and has led process and outcome evaluations. She is skilled in qualitative and quantitative data collection instrument design and has developed surveys and interview guides, as well as created program monitoring/evaluation data sets. Dr. Varghese is experienced in both analyzing large administrative data sets, such as Medicare claims data, and data management.

Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Varghese was a joint director with the Ministry of Finance in the Government of India and led the evaluation of numerous federally funded developmental programs. She was also a consultant at the World Bank on gender issues.