Supriya Shinde is a public health professional and a DrPH student in Advocacy and Leadership at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, with more than 15 years of experience spanning clinical medicine, public health program management, and research administration across India and the United States of America.

Her path into public health began in clinical practice, working as a family physician in a low-income community in Mumbai, India, where she witnessed firsthand how systemic barriers – not just individual choices – shaped patient outcomes. That perspective led her out of clinical practice and into public health systems work, where she led a public-private partnership to revitalize primary health centers across Rural Rajasthan (India), conducted monitoring and evaluation of multiple public health programs, and focused on research and evidence-based implementation of interventions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, while supporting an initiative to strengthen pharmacy distribution networks and vaccination strategy across India – work that sharpened her interest in how funding, policy, and operations intersect to determine whether public health interventions actually reach the people who need them.

Seeking to deepen her research and policy work, Supriya earned a Master of Public Health in Social Epidemiology from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, and later a Master of Science in Health Services Research and Policy Research from the University of Iowa. Currently, Supriya works as a Research Grant Specialist with Emergency Medicine at the University of Iowa Health Care.