
Biography
Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. She is also a Fellow in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. She is a health/medical geographer with expertise in measuring and conceptualizing health care access, health and healthcare equity, and spatial epidemiology. Her research and teaching focuses include the application of spatial analytic/statistical/epidemiologic methods to study interactions between health(care) policies, healthcare access and utilization and underlying, population-level health inequities, and identify points of intervention at structural- and system-levels.
Dr. Planey’s ongoing research includes collaborative studies of birth outcomes (preterm birth and low birth weight) among Black immigrants in segregated neighborhoods, spatial mismatch by race and gender among workers in US metro areas, and the disparate effects of rural hospital closures on acute care access. At the core of her research agenda is equity in access and outcomes. Dr. Planey earned her PhD in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, after earning her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley respectively.