Dr. Ragan Johnson found her passion for health equity and education early. Growing up in Memphis, TN with family members impacted by a lack of access to healthcare, she realized the importance of striving to reach health equity through the community. Her work pairs her love of beauty and health by partnering with beauty industry professionals to help spread the word about sexual health. She has developed interventions for both barber shops and beauty salons that have increased the community's knowledge about preventing HIV and sexually transmitted infections in places that they trust.
As an award winning healthcare provider and an expert community-partnered researcher, Dr. Johnson has centered her work on health equity and anti-Black racism. She is an Associate Clinical Professor at Duke University School of Nursing. She earned a DNP with a public health concentration in 2012 and a MS in Nursing in 2005, both from The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, TN. She received her BS in nursing from Tennessee State University in 2001.