Dr Mridula Shankar
Research Fellow
Mridula Shankar is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights with a particular interest in improving understanding of reproductive health behaviours and outcomes through application of innovative approaches to measurement and study design. Through an ongoing collaboration, she is examining the completeness of abortion reporting in the Australian context using linked self-report and health administrative data.
Her current research with the AIM-Gender study seeks to elucidate structural, regulatory, behavioural and gender-based factors affecting the participation of pregnant women in clinical trials with a view to co-designing solutions and strategies to address their under-representation in research.
Mridula received her PhD in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2021. Her doctoral research sought to address evidence gaps on induced abortion, specifically in relation to quality of care and women’s pathways to medical abortion self-care in Nigeria and India. Her work in this area is driven by an enduring interest in examining and addressing disparities in people’s ability to exercise the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Mridula co-teaches the Gender and Health graduate-level course at the University.