Priya Shankar, MD, MPH

Dr. Shankar is a physician with a passion for gender justice, intersectional feminism, reproductive and mental health, and health equity. She is a graduate of the UCSF Pediatric Leaders for the Underserved Residency Program and also is the co-founder of the award-winning organization called Girls Health Champions which fights gender bias by training youth globally as gender and health peer educators. She was a former Fulbright-Nehru Scholar to India from 2009 to 2010 and a Fogarty-NIH fellow from 2020 to 2022 where she focused on global adolescent health.

Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland's Federally Qualified Health Center in teen, school-based health, and primary care. She is also a faculty member with the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.
Education
07/2022 - Global teen health, Fogarty NIH fellowship in Global Health
MD, 05/2017 - MD, Boston University School of Medicine
MPH, 05/2016 - MPH, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
BA, 05/2009 - Political Science, South Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Honors and Awards
  • Chancellor's Award for Public Service, University of California, San Francisco, 2020
  • UCSF Pediatric Residency Grossman Award, University of California, San Francisco, 2020

  1. Sharma A, Shankar P, Sharma R, Krishna N, Jayakumar N, Nalawade S, Doshi A, Nannapaneni A, Krishnan V, Danish M, Ahrens K, Golub S, Dasgupta R, Ravichandran L, Srikanth P, Premkumar S, Nagata JM, Keswani V, Allen I, Seaman J, Pemde H. The Role of Trusted Adults in Shaping Adolescent Health Information Access and Mental Wellbeing in Urban India. Research square 2025. PMID: 40894063


  2. Sharma R, Danish M, Khajenoori Y, Shaikh D, Chaudary Y, Khan H, Bhat N, Doshi A, Nalawade S, Rajput P, Shahi S, Shankar P. Codeveloping an Adolescent Health Program in India During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of a Community-Partnered Responsive Feedback Approach. Global health, science and practice 2023. PMID: 38110201


  3. Priya Shankar, Stephen R Kodish, Farah Meraj Khanam, Sheila Isanaka. Breastfeeding Knowledge and Practices in New Delhi, India Postgraduate Journal of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 2022. PMID:


  4. Priya Shankar, Arjun Shankar. Hidden in plain sight: mental health in India The Lancet Psychiatry 2022. PMID:


  5. Shankar P, Khan H, Shaikh D, Chaudhary Y, Bhat N, Nannapaneni A, Sanghavi R, Sood R, Vakharia I, Sharma R. Youth Advisory Boards During the COVID-19 Pandemic: From Theory to Practice in a Global Health Setting. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine 2022. PMID: 35461654


  6. Shankar P, Rajaraman BK, Shaikh A, Patel P, Nannapaneni A, Sharma S, Sharma R, Sarkar A, Pemde H. Decolonising gender in India. The Lancet. Global health 2021. PMID: 34800374


  7. Bhat N, Shankar P. India's adolescents: taking charge of the future. The Lancet. Child & adolescent health 2021. PMID: 34634245


  8. Shankar P, Sievers D, Sharma R. Evaluating the Impact of a School-Based Youth-Led Health Education Program for Adolescent Females in Mumbai, India. Volume 86 of Issue 1. Annals of global health 2020. PMID: 32566485


  9. Shankar P, Chung R, Frank DA. Association of Food Insecurity with Children's Behavioral, Emotional, and Academic Outcomes: A Systematic Review. Volume 38 of Issue 2. Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP 2017. PMID: 28134627