Rachel Zimmer, DNP, APRN, NP, is an Associate Professor of Implementation Science at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, with additional affiliation in Gerontology and Geriatrics. Her work focuses on improving health outcomes in marginalized communities through health system-community partnerships, with particular emphasis on food insecurity, aging, caregiving, dementia, and the social determinants of health. She integrates research, clinical practice, and community engagement to advance equitable, sustainable models of care.
Dr. Zimmer’s scholarship is grounded in participatory research and implementation science, with a consistent emphasis on ensuring that community voices and lived experience inform program design, delivery, and evaluation. Her work particularly centers on older adults, caregivers, and individuals affected by dementia and food insecurity. She is affiliated with the Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention and with the Maya Angelou Center for Healthy Communities.
Over the course of her career, Dr. Zimmer has led and supported several community-driven initiatives designed to reduce barriers to care and improve access for underserved populations. She founded and served as clinical director of the Wake Forest Baptist Health mobile health program, created to expand access to care for uninsured individuals in underserved communities. She also founded Fresh Food Rx, a produce prescription program developed in partnership with community-based organizations. Across these efforts, her approach has been to meet people where they are and to build interventions that are both evidence informed and community responsive.
Her recent research portfolio reflects strong thematic coherence across food-as-medicine interventions, caregiver and dementia-related care, Medicaid transformation, environmental health disparities, and community-centered implementation. Recent publications listed on her faculty page include studies on produce prescription outcomes, caregiver support in home-based primary care, community perspectives following the Weaver fertilizer plant fire, and implementation-focused evaluation of Fresh Food Rx.
Dr. Zimmer is board certified as a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner through the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. She earned her Nurse Practitioner degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her Doctor of Nursing Practice from East Carolina University. She has secured federal, state, and foundation funding for her work and was among the first nurses to receive the HRSA Geriatric Academic Career Award. Her career has been defined by community-engaged research, education, and advocacy aimed at advancing person-centered, equitable, and sustainable healthcare models.