About Dr. Shrestha
Raslina Shrestha, MD, is a physician scientist and global health advocate whose career has been shaped by a deep commitment to improving access to high-quality care in underserved communities. Raised in Nepal, she witnessed firsthand how systemic inequities prevent patients from receiving timely and compassionate treatment, an early experience that fueled her dedication to global health, implementation science, and health-system strengthening. Her work across burn care, surgery, and dermatology reflects a guiding belief that equitable healthcare is both a moral imperative and a pathway to lasting community resilience.
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At DermREACH, Dr. Shrestha serves as the Executive Secretary where she helps define the organization’s strategic vision and build the operational foundation that supports its global mission. She leads governance processes, digital infrastructure, donor systems, and international program coordination. Her work ensures that DermREACH remains deeply connected to its core pillars—expanding access to dermatologic care, empowering healthcare workers through education, and supporting research in communities that have long been overlooked.
Her professional journey has taken her from Nepal to surgical residency and dermatology-focused research in the United States . Her research works has been supported by institutions including the U.S. National Institutes of Health through both the Fogarty Global Health Research Fellowship (2024) and the NIH All of Us Data Fellows Program (2026). Her Fogarty-funded research was for advancement of context-driven burn resuscitation strategies, developing community fire-safety and injury-prevention programs, and improving patient education tools for low-resource settings, resulting in measurable community impact. Alongside this scientific work, she has used narrative medicine to document and amplify the voices of burn survivors, ensuring that lived experiences not just clinical metrics but inform policy, training, and advocacy. Her commitment to equity has also extended to the global stage, where she has contributed to dialogues on health-system disparities, including at the UN Summit of the Future.
Currently collaborating with the Department of Dermatology at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Shrestha’s work focuses on hidradenitis suppurativa, chronic wound care, inflammatory skin diseases, and dermatologic health disparities. She contributes to large-scale, data-driven projects that illuminate gaps in access, guide clinical decision-making, and elevate the needs of patients often overlooked by mainstream research and care systems. Her research in HS spans psychiatric comorbidities, psychotropic medication use, wound outcomes, biologic therapy patterns, and real-world treatment responses efforts that align closely with DermREACH’s mission to advance equitable dermatologic care worldwide.
Driven by her Nepalese roots and strengthened by her global experiences, Dr. Shrestha is dedicated to building a future where dermatologic care is accessible, humane, and equitable ,no matter where a patient lives or what resources they have. Her work reflects a simple conviction: that the most meaningful advances in medicine come not only from scientific innovation, but from listening deeply, caring fully, and lifting up communities whose needs have too often been unheard.
