Rochelle Davidson Mhonde, Ph.D., is an applied health communication scholar whose research aims to reduce health inequities rooted in racism and intersecting systems of oppression. Her work develops community-engaged, digital, and family-based interventions that address sexual health, trauma, gender-based violence, reproductive and maternal health, and HIV. She employs mixed methods within a transformative paradigm to center community voices, cultural contexts, and structural analysis in the design and evaluation of interventions that promote collective well-being.
Her research advances the science and practice of well-being by reducing health inequities rooted in racism and intersecting systems of oppression through applied health communication science. She co-develops community-engaged interventions that enhance family communication about sexual health, trauma, gender-based violence, reproductive and maternal health, and HIV. Grounded in intersectionality and justice-oriented paradigms, her work frames well-being as collective care and social transformation, which provides community support for individual well-being. With professional experience as a project manager and communication strategist in South Africa and other Global South contexts, she brings an advocacy-based lens to well-being and capacity-building amid structural injustice.