Cecilia Rabayda

Cecilia Rabayda is interested in developing communication interventions to address health and care disparities. Specifically, she aims to use community-engaged methods to develop culturally-tailored interventions with and for sexual and gender minority youth.

Cecilia Rabayda is a first-year Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving her bachelor’s at the University of Virginia, she completed a research fellowship at the nonprofit Girls Inc. As a fellow, she developed evidence-informed recommendations for addressing the youth mental health crisis at the school level. In particular, she focused on diversifying professional development trainings and implementing supportive school practices to address the unique mental health needs of minority youth.

Rabayda continued her work on health disparity interventions in the Affirm Lab at Boston College. As a research coordinator and design consultant, she investigated how cultural competency trainings for mental health providers can leverage specific behavior change techniques through messaging. As a graduate researcher, Rabayda aims to study how community- and theory-informed communication interventions can mitigate health and care disparities among sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth.