Dr. Monika Arora is a public health scientist working in the area of preventing and managing Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) through health promotion and health advocacy. She is the Director of the Health Promotion Division and Professor at Public Health Foundation of India. She has been involved in Public Health Research, Practice and Training for the past 24 years. Her expertise is in designing, implementing, managing and evaluating intervention programmes in various health promotion settings, large scale group randomized trials as well as qualitative research and policy research on Adolescent Health and NCD prevention and control. She has published more than 100 scientific papers in the high impact public health journals and her research recommendations have informed National Health Programmes in India. She leads a multidisciplinary research programme and has contributed to several research projects as Principal Investigator. She has successfully mentored national and international Ph.D. students and has guided research fellows as well as interns, who are accepted at the division. She is currently a board member of NCD Alliance, Geneva and Co-chair of Global Research Network of Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Dr. Arora has been a member of various national and international expert committees on NCDs and Adolescent Health-related issues formed the World Health Organization and Government of India.
Dr. Arora has a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Cardiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. She completed her MSc. (Child Development) from Lady Irwin College, Delhi University and MSc-Public Health (Health Promotion) from LSHTM (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) University of London, UK. She completed Post Graduate Diploma in Guidance and Counselling of Children from IGNOU, India and PG Diploma in Epidemiology from LSHTM, UK.
Dr. Arora has been honoured with the Best Practices Award in Global Health in 2011 by the Global Health Council, for demonstrating best practice examples in the area of health promotion among youth and community, especially focusing on preventing NCDs. She has been awarded the WHO Director General’s World No Tobacco Day Award in 2012; Dr. Prem Menon outstanding service award in January 2018 by World-India Diabetes Foundation (WIDF) in recognition of her contributions to the education and prevention of diabetes among children in India and “Exceptional Women of Excellence 2018 Award” by Women Economic Forum (WEF) in April 2018.
1. Member – Indian Public Health Association (IPHA), West Bengal, India since September 2016.
2. Member of the UKRI International Development Peer Review College since February 2018
3. Adjunct Faculty – Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (KMC), Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India since 2019.
4. Visiting Faculty – London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK for teaching course on “Adolescent Health in Low and Middle Income Countries” since 2010.
5. Board Member of the NCD Alliance, Switzerland for the term 2019-2021.
6. Executive Director of HRIDAY (Health Related Information Dissemination amongst Youth) an NGO working on NCD prevention and control and hosts the secretariat for Healthy India Alliance (India NCD Alliance)
7. Regional Editor for South Asia for BMJ’s Tobacco Control Journal for the period January 2019-December 2021.
8. Commissioner on the Lancet Report “Our Future: A Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing” published in 2016.
9. Member of Second WHO Civil Society Working Group on NCDs formed by the WHO Director General for the term April 2019-April 2021.
10. Co-editor on special issue of Health Education Journal titled- Lifelong Wellbeing: Proactive health promotion for positive health and wellbeing to be released in 2020.
11. Advisory Committee member of Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco Global Research Network, 2019-2020
12. Member of WHF Advocacy Expert Group formed by World Heart Federation, since May 2018.
13. Member of WHO Civil Society Working Group on the third High-level Meeting of the UN General Assembly on NCDs during February 2018-December 2018. http://www.who.int/ncds/governance/high-level-meetings/working-group-members/en/
14. Member of Ad Hoc Working Group on Implementation, Monitoring and Accountability on Ending Childhood Obesity (ECHO), formed by WHO Director General during 2014-2016.
15. Member of the External Advisory Group for the Global Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA-HA!) Framework, (WHO).
16. Member of Editorial Board of the Journal of Adolescent Health (JAH) and Associate Editor of BMC Public Health and BMC Research Notes.
- PHFI
– Large scale group randomized trials in multiple settings on NCD prevention and control
– Designing evidence based multi-component interventions for behaviour change in population in multiple settings.
– School Health Promotion Programming and research
– Community trials among adolescents and youth in India
– Health literacy
– Health communication
– Behaviour change communication research
– Rapid Programme Review
– Health Impact Assessment
– Implementation Science Research
– Policy research
– Qualitative research
– Participatory research
– Systematic reviews
- Adolescent Health
- Public Health Nutrition
- Non-Communicable Diseases(NCDs) and Injuries
- Substance Abuse
- Tobacco Control
- Health Promotion
- Global Health
- Implementation Research
- Research Methods
- Qualitative Research
- Behaviour Change
- Database Management
- Impact Evaluation
- Health Impact Assessment