Our People
Meet the researchers, clinicians, policymakers, advocates and students working within the ARPAN CRE.
Meet the researchers, clinicians, policymakers, advocates and students working within the ARPAN CRE.
Dr Mridula Shankar is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on factors influencing access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. She leads a multi-institutional initiative investigating structural and gender-related barriers to pregnant women’s participation in clinical trials, with studies in India and Nigeria.
Find out more about Mridula's research with ARPAN:
Examining the regulatory and ethics landscape for inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research in India
This project addresses a longstanding concern about the underrepresentation of pregnant women in clinical research, focusing on the Indian context. It aims to explore how national regulatory bodies and institutional ethics committees make decisions on the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials. This investigation will provide valuable insights into the barriers and facilitators to responsible inclusion existing at the upstream levels of the research ecosystem. Findings will contribute to a robust foundation for developing context-specific, theoretically informed and targeted behaviour change strategies to optimise the inclusion of pregnant women’s health interests in clinical research.
Meet the researchers, clinicians, policymakers, advocates and students working within the ARPAN CRE.
