Chalanda Evans

Chalanda Evans serves as the director of health justice transformation at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Justice. In this role, she leads the strategy and implementation of the new Health Justice Transformation portfolio aimed at achieving racial and economic justice within Penn Medicine health system operations.

Since joining the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation in 2017, Chalanda has served in roles across the Nudge Unit, Center for Digital Health, and Accelerate Health Equity program to improve patient outcomes, enhance medical decision-making, and scale initiatives to advance Black health. Her past projects include using nudges and machine learning to increase serious illness conversation, improving hepatitis C screening and linkage to care – which was awarded a Penn Medicine Quality and Safety Award in 2023 – and implementing a saliva-based COVID-19 screening program. Before that, Chalanda worked with the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and Howard University on research studies with patients with breast cancer and BRCA 1/2 mutations involving translational genomics, risk communication, shared-decision making, and health disparities.

Chalanda received her master’s degree in public health from the University of Pennsylvania and earned dual bachelor’s degrees in biology and psychology from Virginia Commonwealth University.