Valamar Malika Reagon

Areas of Expertise

• Institutional decision-making and governance under technological change in public health and health systems
• AI governance, digital transformation, and responsible technology adoption
• Mixed-methods evaluation science, implementation science, and program improvement
• Global health and resource-limited health systems
• HIV/STI prevention and public health workforce development
• FemTech, women’s health innovation, and maternal and child health systems

HHS Signature Research Area(s)

• Healthy Lifestyles and Vital Longevity
• Sustainable Organizations and Thriving Communities

Department of Public Health Research Area(s)

• Health Disparities
• Community-Engaged Research
• Intervention and Implementation Science
• Health Systems and Policies

Biography

Dr. Val Malika Reagon is a public health and health systems practitioner-scholar who helps organizations translate evidence, policy, and innovation into effective practice. Her career spans community-based organizations, hospital operations, maternal and child health, HIV and STI prevention, global health, and federal public health leadership.

Her work examines how institutions make, govern, evaluate, and learn from consequential decisions under real-world organizational, workforce, infrastructure, and community conditions. She is particularly interested in whether innovations can function in practice, remain accountable to the people they affect, and produce measurable value. She developed Evalydate®, an evaluation framework that helps organizations assess readiness, governance, workforce capability, adoption, performance, equity, and return on investment across the AI implementation lifecycle.

Dr. Reagon began her health systems career in hospital administration, where she worked in residency program development, regulatory implementation, and Epic electronic health record adoption across three hospitals. She later held fellowship, scientific, and supervisory roles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At CDC, she led monitoring, evaluation, and program performance systems across domestic STI programs and PEPFAR-funded HIV and tuberculosis portfolios, with oversight spanning 45 countries. She also served in domestic and global emergency responses, strengthening public health operations, decision systems, reporting, and communication under rapidly changing conditions.

At Purdue, Dr. Reagon advances applied scholarship in institutional decision-making, technology governance, evaluation, and responsible innovation across public health agencies, health systems, community-based organizations, and industry partnerships. Her interests include AI-enabled public health systems, FemTech and women’s health innovation, population health innovation, responsible data use, and public trust in digital systems. Her teaching uses case-based and experiential learning to help MHA and public health students strengthen critical thinking, evidence verification, ethical reasoning, and professional judgment. Students engage with AI and other emerging technologies as tools to question, test, and improve decisions, not as substitutes for human expertise.

Education

• DrPH, Georgia Southern University
• MPH, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
• MLA, Tulane University
• BS, Northwestern University

Current Courses

• PUBH 57800 - Healthcare Quality and Risk Management
• PUBH 57900 - Information Powered Patient Care in the 21st Century

Selected Publications

• Telehealth After USAID: Building Sustainable Systems in Sub-Saharan African Health Services: https://gjia.georgetown.edu/science-technology/telehealth-after-usaid-building-sustainable-systems-in-sub-saharan-african-health-services/