Rachel Forse

Rachel Forse

Affiliated to Teaching/Tutoring
Visiting address: Tomtebodavägen 18A, 17177 Stockholm
Postal address: K9 Global folkhälsa, K9 GPH Hanson, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • Dr. Rachel Forse, PhD, is a global health researcher and implementation scientist specializing in tuberculosis (TB), health equity, and social protection in low- and middle-income countries. Her work integrates systems thinking, participatory research, and operational leadership to improve care for people affected by poverty-related diseases.

Research

    • Social Protection: Co-designing and evaluating psycho-socioeconomic support interventions that reduce the costs of care and improve clinical outcomes.
    • Implementation Science: Leading hybrid trials and multi-component complex interventions to improve access, adherence, and quality of care.
    • Health Systems Strengthening and Economic Evaluation: Applying costing and evaluation methods to understand the financial and systemic implications of providing healthcare services and support programs.
    • Clinical Trial Management: Overseeing the design, implementation, and monitoring of pragmatic and regulatory trials, including randomized controlled trials evaluating new drugs for TB.

    Dr. Forse brings over a decade of experience managing large-scale health service delivery programs and supporting the growth of local NGOs across Asia and Africa. She has helped to establish and scale several start-up organizations focused on community-based care and health systems innovation. As Program and Operations Director at Friends for International TB Relief and an affiliated researcher at the Karolinska Institutet, she leads research and implementation efforts that bridge science and practice. She is an experienced mixed-methods researcher with expertise in stakeholder-engaged qualitative research, economic evaluation, process evaluation, and implementation science. She currently serves as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on multiple studies and projects, including the UPLIFT trial, the ASPECT trial, and the Re-imagining TB Care initiative in Vietnam. Her work aims to improve the lives of people affected by socially determined diseases through evidence-based, community-led interventions.

    Networks:

    Dr. Forse serves as a Secretariat and Steering Committee member for the Health and Social Protection Action Research and Knowledge Sharing (SPARKS) network, which has members in 22 countries. She is a consultant for the Stop TB Partnership's Global Fund technical support pool.

Articles

All other publications

Grants

  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2026 - 31 December 2029
    Even if a patient is cured, post-treatment clinical, psychological and economic sequelae from tuberculosis (TB), and particularly post-TB lung disease (PTLD), constitute a major source of disability and impaired quality of life. As PTLD was defined only recently, this field of research is nascent, so that policies and investment in PTLD management are absent, especially in high TB burden countries such as Viet Nam. Our SPECTRUM study proposes to promote progress towards person-centred, gender-responsive post-TB care and protection in Viet Nam and globally by measuring clinical burden of and developing a prediction tool for PTLD and subtypes
    assessing social and economic challenges individuals and households face post-TB
    exploring gender-associated dynamics in TB-affected households as patients and caregivers during and after the episode of TB
    and promoting national and global policy translation. A mix of prospective cohort and cross-sectional designs with quantitative and qualitative data collection methods will be used. Key endpoints will entail confirmation of PTLD and subtypes, and measures of health-related quality of life, stigma and catastrophic costs. The study´s key outcomes will be to introduce clinical standards for post-TB care into Viet Nam´s national TB guidelines and develop global policy recommendations for psycho-socioeconomic protection and support, and in doing so to alleviate (predominantly silent) suffering in persons and households with PTLD.

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