Parvati Singh, PhD, MPA, an assistant professor in the College of Public Health, has earned The Ohio State University 2025 Early Career Distinguished Scholar Award. Senior leadership in the Enterprise for Research, Innovation and Knowledge recently surprised Singh with the honor during a department meeting.
Parvati Singh receives 2025 Early Career Distinguished Scholar Award
“Thank you, I just hope I can rise to the level that you believe in me,” Singh said during the surprise. “I am incredibly thankful to my Ohio State family and to all my students, mentors and colleagues for their support and motivation."
"Research is a team sport, and we stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us. This work would not be possible without the amazing, incredible people who have provided unconditional support and guidance along the way.”
Singh’s research program studies how sudden changes in the socioeconomic and health policy environment affect population mental health and health service utilization. She is particularly interested in leveraging natural and quasi-experimental settings for identifying causal antecedents of psychiatric outcome. Her work focuses on vulnerable groups and her international research examines maternal and child health outcomes in India.
“Dr. Singh’s range of scholarship -- covering topics including disparities in psychiatric outcomes and economic factors that influence health outcomes – has true impact,” said Cynthia Carnes, senior associate vice president for research operations. “Her pursuit of excellence and dedication to improving lives is the embodiment of our land grant mission.”
“Every segment of your work has impact in general, but also at this particular time in our world and in our nation,” said Karla Zadnik, the interim dean for the College of Public Health. “This is one of those great moments where you get to surprise someone with such a well-deserved recognition for work that is both impactful and really hard to do.”
Alison Norris, division of epidemiology chair, noted four of Singh’s admirable characteristics: having excellent ideas, always looking to do better, a true desire for collaboration, and hard work. “You lift us all by looking for ways to work with us and feed our ideas with your ideas. No matter of brilliance or congeniality can have allowed you to accomplish what you have without the incredible hard work you put in.”
Singh serves as an academic editor for PLoS Global Public Health and has been recognized with a Provost’s Early Career Fellowship at Ohio State. Prior to arriving at Ohio State, Singh was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California Institute for Prediction Technology. She earned her bachelor’s in biomedical instrumentation engineering at Avinashilingam University and completed a post-graduate diploma in management from the Institute of Rural Management in India. She earned her master’s degree in public policy analysis from the University of Texas at Austin and her doctorate in public health from the University of California, Irvine. She has consulted in health policy for the World Bank, focused on South Asia.
The Early Career Distinguished Scholar Award is among the highest annual honors awarded at Ohio State. The university-level award honors three to four faculty members who demonstrate scholarly activity, conduct research or creative works that represent exceptional achievements in their fields and garner distinction for the university. Award recipients are nominated by their departments and chosen by a committee of senior faculty, including past award recipients. Early Career Distinguished Scholars receive an honorarium and a research grant to be used over the next three years.
Quotes from Singh’s nomination:
“It would be hard for me to identify an emerging scholar in our field who has demonstrated greater intellectual contributions and impact than Parvati Singh. Her work is advancing the field both conceptually and methodologically…Dr. Singh’s career trajectory is that of a star in the making, and I expect her impact to only grow from here.” Sidra Goldman-Mellor, University of California Merced.
“What makes Dr. Singh’s work particularly notable is not only that she implements credible analytic designs to test the impacts of natural experiments on population mental health but also that she tests interesting social science theories.,” Alexander Tsai, Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Dr. Singh’s research has yielded new insights on both the drivers of disease at the population level and the pathways through which these drivers exert their impacts. Her work has resulted in surprising, policy-relevant insights.” Atheendar S. Venkataramani, University of Pennsylvania.