Purva Abhyankar

Purva Abhyankar is a Research Fellow at the Usher Institute within the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, having joined in January 2025 after prior research and teaching roles at the University of Stirling. Her work focuses on global respiratory health projects including Horizon Europe's FreshAirforLife initiative and the PuRe trial across South/Southeast Asia.

Her educational qualifications include:

• MA Psychology
• MSc Health Psychology
• PhD Health Psychology

Her research spans Health Promotion & Behaviour Change, Health-Related Decision Making, and Implementation Science with emphasis on global health, complex intervention development, self-management support, and decision aids. She employs interdisciplinary mixed methods to improve healthcare decisions and illness management through psychological behavior theories.

Recent publications (2022-2025) reveal strong thematic focus on women's pelvic health barriers, stigmatized symptom help-seeking, and behavior change in acute coronary syndrome. Her work increasingly addresses low-resource global contexts using mixed-methods systematic reviews and intervention trials to identify care barriers and develop context-specific solutions.

Purva leads Work Package 3 for FreshAirforLife (intervention adaptation across Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Greece, Romania) and the PuRe trial process evaluation (across India, Malaysia, Bangladesh). She accepts PhD students and collaborates internationally on Horizon Europe-funded projects targeting tobacco/air pollution reduction and pulmonary rehabilitation.

She operates within the Usher Institute's Centre for Population Health Sciences while maintaining secondary affiliation with Moray House School of Education and Sport, leading multidisciplinary teams on respiratory health and women's health implementation science projects across diverse global settings.