I worked at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). My work focused on analyzing the impact of UNDP-supported health investment cases.
Public Health Practice Spotlight: Pranjali Gupta, MPH ’26 (Social and Behavioral Sciences)
What organization did you work with? What was your role?
Where was your work located?
New York.
What is your career goal?
I hope to design sustainable health solutions to improve population-level health outcomes, especially when it comes to facilitating access to treatments for underserved patients.
What was your public health practice funding source?
I was jointly funded via the Yale Institute of Global Health and the Yale School of Public Health.
Inside the main hall of the headquarters
What were your duties/responsibilities during your applied practice experience?
My work focused on examining how countries use completed UNDP-supported health investment cases to mobilize resources and prioritize health actions. I also analyzed the cases’ ROI for health prevention and articulating country-specific needs for follow-up support. Finally, I identified opportunities to adapt the investment case model and conduct deeper analysis (e.g., among vulnerable populations) to strengthen UNDP’s programmatic guidance.
What did you take away from your experience?
My time at UNDP helped me understand a lot of the different functions of the UN, and most notably the gap between country-level office work and the higher-level UN mission. It also instilled in me that global and population health work is a long-term commitment, and highly collaborative. Seeing the impacts of large-scale interventions takes time, and you will always be working with organizations and governments who may not have the exact same priorities, which is why agreeing on common goals and understanding which health outcomes you’re targeting is so important. It's also crucial to learn how to advocate for your work and communicate the impact of your proposed solutions, especially when helping countries prioritize limited funding.
At a UNDP event: “Restoring Health, Rebuilding Futures: Innovations for Crisis-Affected Communities”
What was the most rewarding aspect of your experience? What was the most challenging aspect? The most surprising aspect?
To complement my previous work experience in the private sector, understanding the inner workings of a big multilateral international health organization was one of my goals coming into YSPH. My summer at UNDP provided that and more. I also got to sit in on several high-level meetings at the UN Secretariat, which was a highlight. It was incredibly rewarding to be a part of a project as high-impact as the health investment cases, especially as part of the preparation for the 2025 High Level Meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). In fact, I even attended the UNDP side-event to the UN General Assembly in September, where my analyses and findings were presented to Member State health ministers, and next steps were discussed for taking the investment cases forward. Being able to really see the tangible impacts of my work like this was very rewarding.
I think I was most challenged by how much of the work involved making sense of inconsistent data from different countries and contexts. Navigating this complex multitude of sources and perspectives made it challenging to create a cohesive and useful analysis, especially when thinking through how my team could take this forward to policymakers and funding organizations for action. What really helped was leaning on the experience and perspective of senior colleagues at UNDP.
I was also surprised by how different each of the UN bodies were, from UNDP to UNAIDS to UNICEF to UN Women; each has its own personality and style of working, and of course its own priorities. It's useful to spend time in the UN system if you're planning to work in global health so that you can better understand the stakeholders in your focus area.
How has YSPH prepared you for this experience?
Both from a coursework and a practice perspective, YSPH has so many opportunities to engage with public health in international contexts. In fact, this was one of the reasons I chose Yale. As a YIGH Leadership in Global Health Fellow, I could learn from my classmates at different global health organizations such as Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, The Global Fund, the World Bank, and UNICEF, which helped me broaden my understanding of the global health ecosystem.
Inside the main policy-making arm of the UN
What would you say to a student who’s considering a similar public health practice experience?
Go for it! Your summer is a time to try something new and broaden your understanding of public health work in different contexts. Working at an organization like UNDP is a great way to get exposure to global health, and it will help you decide if you could see yourself in the field going forward.