Mindy Panulo, PhD Candidate (Environmental Health)
Research Associate and Research Coordinator
Mindy Panulo is a Research Coordinator with over eight years of experience in applied public health and implementation research in Malawi. She leads multidisciplinary research projects, providing technical oversight from study design and implementation to data analysis, stakeholder engagement, and dissemination of findings. Her research focuses on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), environmental health, health systems strengthening, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), food hygiene, and behaviour change, with particular expertise in mixed-methods research and process evaluation.
Since joining WASHTED in 2017, Mindy has led and contributed to numerous nationally and internationally funded research and consultancy projects. Her portfolio includes The Hygienic Family project, COVID-19 health systems and behaviour change studies, the Drivers of Resistance in Uganda and Malawi (DRUM) project, and consultancies for the World Bank, USAID/JSI, WaterAid, and World Vision. She currently provides technical leadership for WASHTED’s flagship programmes, including the Strengthening Guardian Waiting Shelters in Malawi’s Health System project, the WASH for Everyone (W4E) programme, and the Market-Based Sanitation Learning Agenda Development project. Through these initiatives, she works closely with government institutions, development partners, and academic collaborators to generate evidence that strengthens programmes and informs policy and practice. She has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed publications and serves as a reviewer for international scientific journals, including BMC Public Health, BMC Nutrition, SAGE, and Springer Nature.
Mindy is currently pursuing a PhD in Environmental Health at the University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom), where her research examines barriers and opportunities for sustainable sanitation and hygiene behaviours in rural Malawi. She is a recipient of the University of Strathclyde Global Research Scholarship, which supports her doctoral studies, and was previously awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Shared Scholarship to pursue her MSc in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom). She also holds a BSc in Public Health-Environmental Health option from the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton (Kenya), and a Diploma in Nursing and Midwifery from Malawi Adventist University.