Dr. Aishwarya Anand is a Research Coordinator at the Ramalingaswami Centre on Equity and Social Determinants of Health (RCESDH), where she works on health systems research focusing on maternal health, dignity in care and equity in public health services. Her work examines how institutional structures, power relations, and policy priorities shape everyday experiences of care within public health facilities.

Aishwarya’s engagement with the health system began in clinical practice. Trained in dentistry, she served as a Medical Officer at a COVID Care Centre during the pandemic, providing frontline care to patients from predominantly urban poor and lower-middle-income communities. This experience exposed her to the realities of care within overstretched public systems and sparked her interest in understanding the structural drivers of health inequities.

She later worked with the National Health Mission (Karnataka) on the state’s Midwifery Initiative, where she supported the implementation of the Midwifery training institutes and coordinated trainings like Dakshata, CEmONC, and LSAS. This role offered her insight into how public health programmes are implemented, monitored, and governed through administrative structures, targets, and institutional hierarchies.

At RCESDH, Aishwarya is part of the LaQshya Smriti project, which seeks to strengthen respectful, women-centred maternity care within public hospitals. Her work includes mixed-methods research with postpartum women, engagement with maternity care providers, and the development of training approaches that address power, communication, and dignity in childbirth care.

She is particularly interested in participatory and art-based dialogue methods that bring lived experiences of structurally disadvantaged population into conversation with providers and policymakers. Her work aims to bridge institutional decision-making and community knowledge, contributing to more responsive and equitable health systems.