Global public health researcher Bhavya Joshi receives Meredith A. Minkler Award
Graduating doctoral student has served South Sudanese women living through compounded crises
- 3 min. read ▪ Published
Bhavya Joshi, a graduating doctoral student at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, has won the 2026 Meredith A. Minkler Award.
The prize, which was inaugurated in 2025, is given to a graduating student who demonstrates exceptional commitment to community organizing, community-based research, social justice, and/or advocacy. It is named in honor of Professor Emerita Meredith “Merry” A. Minkler, a pioneer in health equity and social justice, and is given to students who embody her spirit and values.
Joshi, who will be marking her DrPH in global public health at commencement, is a research fellow at the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center and a global public health researcher with more than a decade of experience in South Asia, East Africa, and Europe. Her doctoral work focused on reproductive health of refugee populations in humanitarian settings in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp, which was established in 1992 to care for refugee youth whose parents were killed in the Second Sudanese Civil War, and is run by the Kenyan government and the UN Refugee Agency.
Joshi’s Kakuma research was supported by the School of Public Health, (where she was the recipient of the Yen Family Endowed Doctoral Fellowship in Public Health), the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability, and the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies.
Joshi was among the first researchers to analyze the self-identified health needs and access to care of these displaced South Sudanese women living through compounded crisis: armed conflict, food insecurity caused in part by climate change, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In letters highlighting Joshi’s achievements, her nominators described a woman of outstanding achievements, committed to serving vulnerable populations.
“Bhavya understands that sustainable impact requires collective effort,” wrote one nominator. “Her work fostered shared ownership and long-term benefit, extending beyond the life of the research project.”
Another supporter wrote: “By prioritizing the perspectives of displaced South Sudanese women living through compounded crises—conflict, food insecurity, and limited health services—she brings visibility to populations often excluded from public health research. Her collaborative approach not only generates evidence for policy and programmatic change, but also empowers community members to participate as partners in advancing their own health and well-being.”
Joshi, who was born in New Delhi, India, said that coming from a low and middle-income country herself has given her the benefit of first-hand knowledge of the impact a strong community partnership can have on public health. Working with different research teams over time has taught her that the real experts in any community are the community members themselves.
“Are you coming in as a researcher who wants to learn more from them, or are we there for advancement of our own academic goals, or our own careers? Are we thinking about the impact our research on these communities can have after we leave?”
“Global health research can be very colonialistic in its approach,” she said, “so I was very mindful of that, and I’ve been following the literature and the discourse on decolonializing global health—based on a combination of the academic learning at Berkeley that we had, in addition to my own personal experience.”
Joshi will accept her award at the UC Berkeley Public Health commencement ceremony on Tuesday, May 19, at 2 p.m. at Berkeley’s Greek Theater.
