Shreya Suresh graduated summa cum laude from Lafayette College in May 2025 with a BS in neuroscience and a minor in music. During her undergraduate career, she had the incredibly rewarding opportunity to spend a semester abroad in India as part of the School for International Training’s public health, gender, and sexuality program. In India, Shreya conducted an independent study focused on examining youth community mental health initiatives and the democratization of mental well-being in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. In April 2025, she presented the findings of this study at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As an aspiring mental health practitioner, Shreya acknowledges that her Indian heritage will undoubtedly influence her clinical practice, and therefore understands the value of understanding this cultural perspective while contributing to the field of public mental health in India.
Shreya has had a variety of other experiences that have strengthened her passion for public mental health. She built on her background in public health through the Public Health 360 Program run by Global Health and Education Projects. As part of this comprehensive public health training, she attended speaker sessions hosted by public health professionals, practiced her writing and communication skills, and collaborated with a global team to develop and present a grant proposal to combat food insecurity in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
Shreya’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the efficacy and experiences of community mental health workers under a task-sharing model, which involves training community members to provide basic health services within their communities. She is also examining the reciprocal benefits of task sharing for both health workers and their communities by assessing the following: the training received by community mental health workers; mental health care access/utilization in their communities; psychological/social impact on community mental health workers; the relationship between these community providers and formally trained mental health practitioners; and the necessary next steps to further democratize mental well-being.