Purva is a health psychologist by training with many years of research experience in applied health and health services research.

Her research aims to help people make better decisions about their healthcare and actively manage their health and illness by engaging in healthy behaviours. It draws on the knowledge from psychological theories underpinning human behaviour and decision making, applied to improve health and healthcare delivery. Purva is an inter-disciplinary and mixed methods researcher.

Purva joined the University of Edinburgh in January 2025, having previously worked at the University of Stirling in Research and Teaching roles for a number of years. At Usher Institute, Purva is currently working on two global health projects for improving respiratory health.  

FreshAirforLife – an implementation science research project funded by Horizon Europe aimed at developing context-specific interventions to reduce tobacco and air pollution exposure in five countries across the world (Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Greece, Romania). Purva is leading work package 3 of the project which involves selection and adaptation of intervention packages and development of implementation strategies.

PuRe – a 3-arm randomised controlled implementation trial of pulmonary rehabilitation delivered in low resource settings in South and South-east Asia (India, Malaysia and Bangladesh) for people with chronic respiratory disease. Purva is leading the process evaluation of the trial across the four trial centres.

MA Psychology, MSc Health Psychology, PhD Health Psychology

Purva's work spans across there main areas: health promotion/behaviour change, health-related decision making and implementation science. Specific topics of interest are: 

Global health

Implementation of interventions into health services/routine practice 

Development and evaluation of complex health interventions 

Self-management support 

Health-relaetd decision making, decision support 

Health promotion/behaviour change