Rachel is the director of the Medical Research Council's Gender & Health Unit and is based in Pretoria. She trained as a medical doctor and is a specialist in Public Health Medicine. She has a Masters in Community Medicine and Doctorate of Medicine (MD) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London.

She has spent the last 12 years researching gender-based violence, particularly intimate partner violence and sexual violence (including child sexual abuse) in South Africa, using methods drawn from anthropology, epidemiology and health systems research She has authored over one hundred and fifty publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and reports. She has worked closely with the South African government over many years on sexual violence policy in the health sector. She is the Secretary of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, an initiative of the Global Forum for Health Research, and was a member of the steering committee of the WHO multi-country study on violence against women.

Her other research interests include youth sexuality, evaluation of behavioural interventions for HIV prevention, termination of pregnancy, reproductive health and community participation. Most importantly she has been working to ensure that these research findings are translated into interventions within society to improve the lives of women. She was a co-founder and is an active lecturer on the annual four week short course on Reproductive Health Research Methods (for more info check www.rhru.co.za) which is in its 11th year; has a very active programme of PhD supervision and is also an Honorary Professor in the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand and since 1995 has been an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.