Ruth Befekadu is a rising senior at The University of Texas at Austin pursuing a major in Psychology, a minor in Business, and a certificate in Social Inequality, Health, and Policy. Originally from Ethiopia, she is passionate about advancing mental well-being in African contexts, especially through local resources. More broadly, she is interested in creating innovative, cost-effective, and financially accessible mental health care systems.
This summer, Ruth worked with Dr. Rachel Presskreischer on exploring psychotherapy health insurance reimbursement rates across providers, geographic areas, insurance companies, and more. She had the opportunity to conduct extensive literature reviews on health insurance policies, psychotherapy, and financial accessibility. She was also able to learn from quantitative data analyses that combined and analyzed multiple extensive databases.
Ruth is incredibly grateful for the wide range of research skills she gained during this summer. She is excited to continue working on the data analyses and write-up elements of this project. Long term, the project has inspired her to keep exploring the role of financial accesibility in mental health care and other impactful industries.