Sucharat Tayarachakul (“Gift”) graduated with dual degrees from Indiana University in 2011: Bachelor of Science in Human Biology and Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience. In 2015, she graduated with a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University of Indianapolis. While working toward her degrees, she was assisting four laboratories: ecology, neuroendocrine, diabetes, and a clinical study regarding liver disease.
Gift was involved with numerous research studies, three of which were published. She is also a co-founder of the Indiana University-Student Outreach Clinic (IU-SOC), Public Health Section. She was involved in the first project on assessing the community‘s perception regarding using IU-SOC as a primary source of healthcare, instead of a referral system. She also had volunteer experiences at Indiana State Department of Health during the HIV Outbreak in 2015 and at the Union of Thai Traditional Medicine Society during a volunteer trip to poverty-stricken areas in Thailand.
In the summer of 2014, Gift was an intern at Southern Plains Tribal Health Board, through the Graduate Student Epidemiology Program and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). During her internship, her main project was to create the Maternal and Child Health Data Book (1st Edition), American Indian/Alaskan Native Edition. Currently, she is a lead epidemiologist for the Strategic Prevention Framework Tribal Incentive Grant (SPF-TIG), Partnership for Success (SPF-PFS), and SPF-Rx, which all have the main goal of reducing substance use among American Indians/Alaskan Natives in four tribal partners’ jurisdiction areas.
