Presented annually at the TRUST Forum, the 21st Century Pinnacle Leader Award recognizes individuals who are “trailblazers” in leadership, transformation and innovation in health care.
This award is given at the Forum each year to recognize an outstanding woman who has made a difference in our state in health care. This Pinnacle Award shows what a great woman can accomplish in health care!
2025 – Dr. Rachel Hardeman
Dr. Rachel R. Hardeman is a tenured Professor in the Division of Health Policy & Management at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, the Blue Cross Endowed Professor in Health and Racial Equity, and the Founding Director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity (CARHE, pronounced “care”). She serves as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the CDC, and she was named one of TIME’s 2024 TIME100 most influential people in the world. A racial health equity researcher, she studies a critical and complex determinant of health inequity—racism. Her work contributes to a body of knowledge that links structural racism to health in tangible ways, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist.
Dr. Hardeman built her career working with Black birthing people and their babies, including a long-term and impactful partnership with Roots Community Birth Center in North Minneapolis, which is one of only five Black-owned freestanding birth centers in the United States. Her work also examines the potential mental health impacts for Black birthing people when living in a community that has experienced the killing of an unarmed Black person by police. Published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, Dr. Hardeman’s research has elicited important conversations on the topics of culturally-centered care, police brutality and structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities. Her overarching goal is to contribute to a body of knowledge that links structural racism to health in a tangible way, identifies opportunities for intervention, and dismantles the systems, structures, and institutions that allow inequities to persist.
Since founding CARHE in 2021, Dr. Hardeman has built upon the foundation of these community and academic partnerships, deepening her work with Reproductive Justice and expanding into new areas. CARHE’s research projects encompass maternal and infant health, adolescent and child health, older adult health, innovative measurements of structural racism, economy and labor, and criminal justice. Narrative change is also a core mission at CARHE, and the team actively engages in serving as trusted resources for journalists, policy makers, and community members in Minnesota and across the U.S.
Dr. Hardeman is the recipient of several award for her work as an early career investigator including the Dr. Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award from the University of Minnesota (2019) the 2020 recipient of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASSPH) Early Career Public Health Award. She was recently named a McKnight Presidential Fellow awarded for her excellence in research and scholarship, leadership and recently received the AcademyHealth Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award for the impact her research has had on health policy. She is also active locally and nationally with organizations that seek to achieve health equity such as the Minnesota Maternal Mortality Review Committee and the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood of the North Central States. Dr. Hardeman earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry and Spanish from Xavier University of Louisiana, an MPH in Public Health Administration and Policy and a PhD in Health Services Research and Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
Past Winners
2024: Jennifer DeCubellis
2023: Jodi Hubler
2022: Amy Ronneberg
2021: Allison O’Toole
2020: Andrea Walsh
2019: Jan Malcolm
2018: Patsy Riley
2017: Dee Thibodeau
2016: Jeannine Rivet, MPH, BSN, RN, FAAN
2015: Nancy Feldman