Athira Suresh. Photo courtesy of Athira Suresh.

Alumni

Athira Suresh Named 2026 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow

The recent MPH graduate will report on maternal mental health care in the southern Indian state of Kerala, with interviews of health providers, patients, and families in three urban centers and their rural outskirts.

Athira Suresh, a recent graduate of the on-campus Master of Public Health program at the School of Public Health, has been named a 2026 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow.

The Pulitzer fellowship program is part of a long-standing collaboration between the School of Public Health, the Boston University College of Communication, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting through BU’s Program for Global Health Storytelling. Pulitzer fellows explore the intersection of journalism and public health while developing a multimedia project on an underreported health crisis.

Suresh was selected along with BU College of Communication student Kallejhay Terrelonge, whose reporting from her home country of Jamaica will explore long-term recovery following Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm that severely battered the island in October 2025. The Master of Science in Journalism student will cover the support and repair efforts of faith-based and diaspora-led groups, particularly Seventh-day Adventist volunteers from Jamaica and the United States.

Suresh, who recently returned home to Texas after graduating from SPH with certificates in epidemiology and biostatistics and maternal and child health in May, will travel to India in late June for her fellowship project, “What Kerala’s Maternal Health Success Leaves Out: The Invisible Crisis After Childbirth.” She plans to interview OB-GYN physicians, community health workers, patients, and their families in three urban centers and their rural outskirts—including her parents’ hometown of Palakkad and the major cities of Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi—to report on the state of maternal mental health care in Kerala.

By most recent measures, Kerala’s maternal mortality rate (MMR) is the lowest in India at 30 deaths per 100,000 live births, down from 150 in the late 1990s. The state health department also reports that 100% of births were attended by skilled health personnel and 78% of women with a live birth received antenatal care. These dramatic improvements in maternal health outcomes—Kerala’s MMR is already well below the United Nation’s 2023 Sustainable Development Goal target of 70—have positioned Kerala as an oft-cited example of public health success. However, this narrative belies a persistent divide between policy and lived experience, argues Suresh.

“While routine postnatal care ensures physical checkups, it remains overwhelmingly ‘physical’: structured mental health screening is rare, dedicated consultations are limited, and access to psychiatrists is uneven,” writes Suresh in her project proposal. “In a context where mental health remains taboo and childbirth is treated primarily as the event of delivery rather than a continuum of care, mothers’ emotional struggles are often minimized, and frontline workers are not systematically trained to identify postpartum depression.”

Suresh points to a recent study conducted by the Kerala Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and reported by The New Indian Express showing maternal suicide has emerged as a leading cause of maternal mortality in the state. The study found that 1 in 10 maternal deaths recorded between 2020 and 2024 in Kerala were the result of suicide.

“It’s just weird to me that you can […] pride yourself for being a state that really cares about your community […] but to not care about the mothers and their mental health means not caring about well-being in general,” Suresh says.

The problem is deeply personal to her. She suspects that both her mother and maternal aunt experienced unrecognized and untreated postpartum depression in Kerala—her mother after Suresh’s elder sister was born, her aunt following an extended battle with infertility involving the miscarriage of twins and the loss of triplets.

“I think the craziest part is they didn’t even know what mental health was,” says Suresh. Hearing their stories as a teenager in Texas motivated her to pursue a pre-medical course of study as an undergrad, and upon completion of her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas, seek further specialization in maternal and child health at SPH.

Once in Boston, Suresh wasted little time diving deep into the field of maternal and child health research. As a maternal and child health fellow, she contributed to PRESTO (Pregnancy Study Online), supporting the recruitment and retention of BIPOC participants in fertility research. For her practicum, she worked on the CHAMPS (Communities and Hospitals Advancing Maternity Practices) program at the Center of Health Equity and Education and Research (CHEER) at Boston Medical Center (BMC), investigating how to improve breastfeeding practices. Upon graduation, she used Handshake, BU’s online hub for career resources, to secure remote work with BMC’s Reproductive Mental Health Program, conducting qualitative interviews on maternal mental health screening access.

“I realized working [on PRESTO], that the taboo and stigma of [in]fertility and talking about maternal health in the South Asian community is very real. It’s not just with my family,” says Suresh. “I love Kerala. There’s so many amazing things about it—genuinely some of the most educated people I’ve ever met [and] the prettiest place I’ve ever been to. But also, it’s very patriarchal there still, […] and the only healthcare that’s not that accessible in Kerala right now is maternal health. A lot of women have died because of this situation, but since it’s such a taboo topic, people don’t talk about it at all. I want to open the door for the conversation. I just want people to start talking about mental health.”

Erin Johnston (SPH’26) received the Pulitzer fellowship last year. The story resulting from her reporting on neurodiversity and community building in the United Kingdom and her reflections on the experience may be found on the Pulitzer website at the links below:

Community Plays a Key Role in New Approaches To Neurodiversity in the U.K.

‘You’re One of Us’: Finding Shared Experiences and Community for the Neurodiverse