Megan Schmidt-Sane is a medical anthropologist with ten years of research experience in urban informal settlements on health and wellbeing.

In her research, she works collaboratively and with participatory and ethnographic methods to understand the wider political economy of health that drives inequities. Megan completed her PhD in medical anthropology (Case Western Reserve University) and has a Master’s in Public Health (Columbia University).

Her research focuses on the political economy of health and infectious diseases, primarily those with epidemic/pandemic potential, with ethnographic experience in India, Uganda, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom. She is primarily interested in urban sites, particularly urban informal settlements and how conditions of precarity and uncertainty intersect with vulnerability to illness and disease.

She uses participatory and policy-engaged approaches in her research, including through her work on the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform (SSHAP) which works to improve the use of social science approaches and data to inform humanitarian action and epidemic response and The Living Roots Project.

She is currently involved with projects related to climate change and health in urban sub-Saharan Africa (the Urban Futures project), on the social determinants of HIV treatment in Kampala, Uganda, and on the social dimensions of mpox outbreaks. Her experience includes work with the WHO, UNICEF, and national and local public health practitioners.