• Medical doctor with masters in international health from University College London; masters in management and hospital administration and PhD in health policy from University College-London;[Submitted thesis on HPV (Human Pappiloma Virus Vaccine) vaccine policy analysis in Indian context]
• 16 Years of experience in public health program management, public health education, teaching, research and advocacy initiative with focus on immunization program, health system and policy.
• Extensive travel to Europe and South East Asian countries and within India as part of public health education, teaching and research.
Some of the key achievements: Played crucial leadership role in
o Drafted the-Health and Nutrition ‘vision document’ 2025 Karnataka state, India and took lead in policy advocacy.
o Principal investigator for Karnataka nutrition policy review and policy advocacy
o Played crucial role in promoting DNB courses in district hospital in India and now it is a national policy;
o Led the drafting committee of Karnataka Public Health Policy 2017;
o Played crucial role to establish Indian Institute of Public Health-Bangalore campus-India
o Initiated good health at low cost-health innovations lab. Undertaken policy initiative which is sustainable and scalable basic diagnostic labs and medicines dispensing system in urban area
- PHFI
- IIPHH
My current research:
Policy Research focus- 1, The HPV vaccine policy decision process in Indian context:
We adopted post-positivist paradigm of research inquiry to examine the HPV vaccine decision process in India. The policy analysis was undertaken as it is not linked by a linear and predictable (evidence to policy) path to decision outcome. Rather there are multiple-actors, institutions, interacting and they appear to generate a set of often unpredictable effects. Such complex reality can be seen as a result of the influence of actors and their interpretations over how problems are defined? Which form policy decision outcome. From this perspective, the HPV vaccine policy decision process facts are not clearly distinct from the meaning policy actors hold, and searching for laws of cause and effect is an almost irrelevant task. Thus, the study attempted to explain that the concerns related to the HPV vaccine in India is subject to the interpretative manoeuvres and discursive strategies of policy actors who influenced the decision process and promoted specific policy narratives to halt the decision.
Policy research focus-2, Diplomacy of global vaccine policies:
The diplomacy of global vaccine policies to prevent vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs) is more profound on national and global policy agendas than ever in the past. This is primarily because; increasingly the determinants of VPDs depend on dynamics of interaction between risk factors with individuals and family-community in a society. Furthermore, because of rapid labour movement across the nations, rapid transport, trade and commerce coalescing and creating unique transnational culture. Thus, if any fragment of family which suffers from vaccine preventable disease, it no longer confined to that family or community but it rapidly reverberates across the nations for example polio. Hence, the global vaccine diplomacy to make accessible of the all-important vaccines to vulnerable population across nations is more profound than ever in the past/ this can also contribute to sustainable universal health coverage.
However, global VACCINE diplomacy demands political interest, political leadership, their perceptions and values of leadership. In general the global vaccine diplomacy is not politically neutral. However, non-neutral political views should not preclude engaging in global vaccine diplomacy for global population interests. Therefore, my research attempts to understand how different policy actors engage and position themselves within diplomacy of global vaccine policies in general and diplomacy of India vaccine policies in specific.
Research focus:
•National-global level vaccine policy decision process its relation with evidence; application of epidemiological, political, institutional and social analysis for better health policies;
• Health policy transfer between national and international jurisdictions, especially in relation to local, regional and global level for universal health care
•Role of technology in health and its role in achieving of sustainable health system with robust application of data driven policy making process.
Disciplines:
Vaccine policy analysis; health system research; political-social-institutional analysis; implementation analysis; mixed methods
- Health Policy and Planning
- Global Health
- Implementation Research
- Research Methods
- Health System
- Resource Mobilization
- PHFI Lab
- Technical Advisor
- Project/Programme Management/Implementation