Tirna Purkait

Dr. Tirna Purkait is a Postdoctoral Fellow at RSPH's Hubert Department of Global Health, where her research centers on understanding chronic disease disparities and multimorbidity progression by leveraging large-scale longitudinal cohort data.

She earned her PhD in Nutrition and Health Sciences from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), where her work integrated community-engaged approaches to examine multilevel social determinants of health and to identify actionable policy and intervention opportunities to improve food and nutrition security and prevent obesity and chronic diseases. Her doctoral dissertation, “Promising Federal Nutrition Assistance Programs, Policies, and Intervention Approaches for Addressing Health Equity in Households with Young Children,” was part of the USDA-funded Healthy People, Healthy State project, in which she served as the Co-Investigator. In this role, she developed survey instruments with validity and reliability evidence, led dissemination strategies for recruitment that engaged over 2,500 underserved households, including rural and food desert communities. During her postdoctoral training at UNL’s Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies, she applied implementation science to translate research into practice by designing Python-based geospatial workflows to map food and nutrition insecurity “hot spots” and by creating technical training materials for community health workers. She also holds dual master’s degrees in Food Science and Nutrition (MS) and Food Technology (M.Tech), and brings prior industry experience spanning FMCG business development, health-focused content creation, wellness consulting, and food industry quality assurance.