BOARD OF DIRECTORS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR- Nithya Arun (she/her/hers) is a junior at the University of Michigan School of Public Health majoring in Community and Global Public Health with a minor in Biochemistry. She intends on becoming a practicing physician and is also interested in developing policy at the federal level that targets and ameliorates health inequities within the United States. Nithya started SAAHI as a means to promote health within the South Asian community through research, community education, and advocacy.
RESEARCH COORDINATOR- Sona Raju (she/her/hers) is a senior at the University of Michigan studying Neuroscience with a minor in Gender and Health. She is passionate about working directly with communities in order to eliminate health inequities. Sona joined SAAHI to utilize community education as a tool to reduce stigma surrounding various health issues in the South Asian community, as well as to promote research into the unique needs of her community.
RESEARCH COORDINATOR- Sahita Manda (she/her/hers) is a sophomore at the University of Michigan intending to major in Public Health Sciences. She hopes to eventually pursue a career in medicine and is passionate about health equity research, volunteering with children with autism spectrum disorder, and advocating for reproductive justice for incarcerated mothers and birthing people. In getting involved in SAAHI, Sahita aims to shed light on the health needs of South Asians through research, education, advocacy, and community engagement.
OUTREACH DIRECTOR- Lakshmi Meyyappan (she/her/hers) is a junior at the University of Michigan, majoring in Public Health Sciences with minors in Business and Music. She hopes to become a practicing physician and public health professional in the future by focusing on addressing health disparities and social determinants that feed into health outcomes, and advocating for a more equitable world. Lakshmi joined SAAHI because she is passionate about working with the South Asian community in order to develop impactful interventions.
OUTREACH DIRECTOR- Subarna Bhattacharya (she/her/hers) is a junior at the University of Michigan, majoring in Community and Global Health with minors in Writing and Applied Statistics. As she makes her way through college and gain a greater understanding of the world around her, the more and more she has been realizing that public health is truly in every corner of our lives. Through SAAHI, she is hoping that we can not only make research conclusions, but also make these findings accessible and understandable to the general South Asian population.
FINANCE DIRECTOR- Yashasvini Nannapuraju (she/her/hers) is a junior majoring in Biology, Health and Society with a minor in Public Policy. In the future, she hopes to become a practicing physician while pursuing interests in community health education and policy to promote health equity. Yashasvini joined SAAHI because she was inspired by the organization’s mission to encourage research into the unique health needs of South Asians. She is passionate about research as a means to identify needs and promote health in underserved populations.
FINANCE DIRECTOR- Anushri Gupta (she/her/hers) is a junior majoring in Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is passionate about shedding light on mental health issues within the South Asian community. Through SAAHI, she hopes to engage in discourse with the broader community on various stigmatized health issues. She is excited to be a part of SAAHI and hopes to affect change in order to promote health.
STUDENT ADVISORS
Siddharth Madapoosi is a first-year medical student at the University of Michigan Medical School. He did his undergrad in Microbiology and MPH in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. As an undergrad, he led a student org that addressed health inequities in Ann Arbor by, for example, creating care packages for the homeless population and accompanying patients to their physician appointments to improve healthcare access. He has always sought to engage with the South Asian community in a similar fashion, and he hopes to use his quantitative research experiences and passion for health equity to increase awareness of and tackle the many barriers to health outcomes faced by South Asian Americans.
Namratha Atluri is currently a second-year medical student at the University of Michigan Medical School, and graduated from Duke University with a double major in Neuroscience and Global Health. Growing up as an Indian American, she was often frustrated by the prejudiced and deeply conservative social structures that perpetuate health inequities in South Asian communities. From studying abuse and trauma in orphaned and vulnerable children in New Delhi, India to evaluating the barriers to healthcare access in marginalized Nepali communities, she realized how powerful academic research and evidence was to foster social change. She looks forward to bringing her experience in research and passion for tackling injustices to SAAHI to create a platform that promotes awareness, scholarly exploration, and discussion of the mental and reproductive health challenges that plague South Asian populations today.
RESEARCH ADVISORY BOARD
Mousumi Banerjee is Anant M. Kshirsagar Collegiate Research Professor of Biostatistics at University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. She is also Director of Biostatistics at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy, member of the Rogel Cancer Center, and member of the Office of Global Public Health at Michigan. She received her BStat and MStat degrees from the Indian Statistical Institute and her PhD in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Banerjee's methodological research focuses on machine learning, correlated data, survival analyses, and competing risks, with applications to health services and outcomes research. Her areas of substantive research are cancer and pediatric heart disease. She studies fundamental issues related to healthcare delivery, outcomes, and health disparities in the population, using national disease registries, claims data, and electronic health records. Dr. Banerjee is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.
Sowmya Balasubramanian is a board-certified pediatric cardiologist with specialization in non-invasive imaging including echocardiography, fetal echocardiography and cardiac MRI. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics. Her research interests include understanding ventricular mechanics in various congenital heart disease (CHD) models, implementing quality improvement in CHD and more recently examining gender disparities in academic medicine.
Dr. Blackwood is vice-chair of the Institutional Review Board of U-M Medical School. He is a member of the Admissions Committee, Student Biomedical Research Committee and Advisory Board, and the M.D./Ph.D. Program Advisory Committee. Dr. Blackwood has received numerous teaching awards including the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award and he was inducted as a teacher into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society’s Michigan Chapter in 2009. He also has been developing partnerships with area schools to foster education and to provide mentoring and tutoring for disadvantaged and underrepresented student populations.
Gurpreet Rana leads the Taubman Health Sciences Library's involvement in and response to global health initiatives, establishes partnerships, promotes and foster relationships, and creates opportunities in research, teaching and learning in the health sciences. In her role as Global Health Coordinator, she develops and implements a range of efforts including programs, instruction, and services to contribute to the University's efforts in global health. She identifies global information resources, cultivate partnerships within health sciences community, explore the role of global health informatics in instruction, incorporating librarians into global health initiatives, identify and investigate grant and funding opportunities, take part in research efforts in global health, and collaborate with faculty to lessen health disparities around the world using the power of information resources.