Nikkil Sudharsanan is a population health scientist whose research combines demography, epidemiology, and economics to study adult health and aging in developing countries. He earned a PhD in demography and an MA in statistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Nikkil’s research is motivated by two questions: why do individuals in some populations live shorter and unhealthier lives than others; and why are investments in preventive health low in developing countries? His work is focused on understanding social differences in longevity, and the population-level health and economic effects of preventive health interventions in India and Indonesia. As a Bell Fellow, Nikkil studied the decision to engage in high-return health investments among adults in India and developed new methods for the study of population health by integrating traditional demographic analyses with causal inference and mediation methods. (Nikkil is the Rudolf Mößbauer Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science for Disease Prevention and Health Care at the Technical University of Munich.)
