Anjali is a health-social psychologist with a focus on individual and workplace strategies for social connection, health, and well-being. Her research, which adopts a social determinants of health perspective, has previously involved developing a health behavior intervention for custodial workers in the United States, examining the relationship between shift work, job stress, and health among call center employees in India, exploring the cultural context of HPV and cervical cancer prevention among women in Malawi, and comparing educational strategies to increase HPV vaccine uptake in low-income populations in the US.

Aimed at tackling our society’s loneliness and chronic illness epidemics, Anjali’s research is centered on designing work to foster social connection and well-being, and she has a project on communal meal breaks as an intervention strategy to increase connectedness among environmental service workers in healthcare. She strives for greater collaboration between research and the populations we study so we can learn from each other to build evidence-based solutions for well-being that are not only effective but are also practical and sustainable in the face of real-world changes.

Since joining the Oregon Healthy Workforce Center (OHWC) in 2011, Anjali has managed its multi-component program comprised of research, evaluation, education, and dissemination. Deeply motivated to break down silos between academia and society, Anjali also co-leads OHWC’s Outreach Core, where she has led research-to-practice efforts over the years to inform the effective development and dissemination of evidence-based resources beyond academia.

Anjali believes deeply in the power of collaborative action for well-being and is engaged in multiple initiatives. She serves on OHSU’s Wellbeing Collaborative and NIOSH’s Healthy Work Design and Well-Being Cross-Sector Council, and has provided input to the Foundation for Social Connection’s Work, Employment, and Labor Sector Report, to the Canadian Alliance for Social Connection and Health in developing the world’s first public health guidelines for social connection, and to the World Health Organization - Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection (WHO-GILC) initiative on research and public health priority setting for social connection.

Find my publications at Google Scholar.