Laalitha Surapaneni

Introduction

Dr. Vishnu Laalitha Surapaneni is an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine with a Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a practicing hospitalist at the MHealth Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis.

Dr. Surapaneni's areas of interest are impacts of climate change on health equity, sustainable healthcare delivery, and the role of physician advocacy in developing science-based policy. She is a member of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change United States Brief workgroup through the University's Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility and an associate at the Institute on the Environment.

Dr. Surapaneni has co-authored white papers on health harms of fossil fuel infrastructure, provided testimony to the Minnesota legislature on numerous occasions, and served on the Minnesota state Department of Transportation’s Sustainable Transportation Advisory Council in a governor-appointed role.

As a science communicator, she regularly speaks with media outlets about public health impacts of climate change and has been interviewed by City Pages, MPR, Associated Press, and the Guardian. Her work has been cited in print and online outlets including the Star Tribune, MN Daily and Common Dreams. She also regularly contributes opinion pieces and is Public Voices fellow with The OpEd Project in partnership with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.