Rachel Waford received her PhD from the University of Louisville in Louisville, KY. She completed her pre-doctoral internship in first-episode psychosis at Harvard Medical School in the Prevention and Recovery for Early Psychosis Program (PREP) and Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston, MA. Waford then completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine/Grady Health System. She specializes in providing psychotherapy for individuals living with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. She also supervises psychology and psychiatry interns who are interested in serving this population.
Waford is jointly appointed as an assistant professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at the Emory's Rollins School of Public Health where she teaches and mentors MPH students in global mental health topics including cross-cultural research methods and understanding mental health systems. Her public health research focuses on understanding barriers to care, and facilitators of recovery across the state of Georgia and beyond. She uses global mental health frameworks to develop innovative models of service provision, community engagement and peer-led initiatives. Waford is also a consulting psychologist with Children Healthcare of Atlanta's new early psychosis program. She currently serves as the vice-chair of the board of directors for Community Friendship, INC and is a volunteer psychologist for the Atlanta Asylum Network and Georgia Human Rights Clinic.