Rana Islamiah Zahroh
Research Assistant
Rana’s research focuses on ensuring women can exercise their rights during pregnancy and labour. This includes improving women’s engagement and participation during pregnancy and childbirth, and ensuring women receive life-saving interventions when they need them. Her research portfolio spans from understanding discourse, trends, and decision-making process on caesarean section use, optimising the use of caesarean section and assisted vaginal birth, labour companionship implementation, and improving women’s access to life-saving interventions for preterm birth management, pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, and maternal infection prevention.
Rana has vast experience in conducting research using different methodologies, this includes big data analysis from large surveys and social media, using quantitative and computational analysis in Stata, R, and Python, qualitative analysis, and systematic reviews adopting mixed-methods, qualitative evidence synthesis and qualitative comparative analysis. Prior to coming to Australia, Rana served as project lead on several maternal health research in Indonesia aiming to reduce maternal mortality in rural areas of West Nusa Tenggara.
Rana received her undergraduate degree from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) supported by KAIST Scholarship, MPH degree from the University of Melbourne sponsored by Australian Awards Scholarship, and currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Melbourne, funded by Human Rights Scholarship and Melbourne Research Scholarship.