Prof. Monika Arora
Vice-President Research and Health Promotion

Prof. Monika Arora is a public health scientist working in the area of Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) prevention and control and adolescent health. She is the Vice President (Research and Health Promotion) at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). She is the President of the NCD Alliance (2023-25), was the founding Chairperson of the South East Asia NCD Alliance (2020-23), and a Founding GB member of the Healthy India Alliance. She coordinates a multi-disciplinary research team at PHFI. She Chairs the Research Management Committee of PHFI and is also a Member Secretary of the External Research Advisory Council of PHFI.

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Research Infrastructure

The laboratory at PHFI is equipped to deal with all aspects of clinical biochemistry and basic genetics research. The lab is equipped with: Chemistry analyzers c311, immunochemistry analyzer e411 from ROCHE, D-10 from Bio-Rad, Electrolyte analyzer from Caretium, microplate reader from Bio-Rad, Spectrophotometer from Thermo, Gas chromatography from Agilent.

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About Health Promotion Division (HPD)

The Health Promotion Division at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) aims to nurture interdisciplinary health promotion research, programming and practice and focuses on promoting multi-sectoral coordination. The Division adopts a settings based approach to design health communication, health literacy, and community outreach activities that mainstream health promotion policy and practice. The Division works on designing theory-based interventions to develop healthy settings in diverse contexts and generates evidence to support effective messaging, programming and policy development. The Division brings together approaches ranging from health education, advocacy, community empowerment, legislative reforms, fiscal policy change to organizational change and strengthening health services to address social inequalities in health.

The Division undertakes rigorous evaluation of outcomes and processes to assess impact of these health promotion interventions on population health and wellbeing. Research on impact of programmes in influencing health of individuals and population is a core activity undertaken at the Health Promotion Division. Represented by multi-disciplinary team of Epidemiologists, public health experts, clinicians, behavioral scientists, nutritionists, qualitative researchers and heath communication experts.

Brochure Implementation of Peer Education Programme in i-Saathiya

Impact Stories

Sex Selection in Pregnancy

Dr. Sutapa B. Neogi (Principal Investigator), IIPH-Delhi (Relevance to MDG 3A and 5A)

Objective: Sex selection is a major social concern in India. The use of indigenous medicines purportedly influencing the probability of having a son is reported to be a common practice... Read More

Programme for Improving Mental Health CarE (PRIME)

Dr. Rahul Shidhaye (Principal Investigator), CCCI, PHFI

Objective: The Programme for Improving Mental Health CarE (PRIME) was launched in 2011 to generate evidence on the implementation and scaling up of... Read More

mHealthcare

Dr. Ajay Vamadevan (Project Coordinator), CCCI, PHFI

Objective: The rising burden of chronic diseases, and their co-morbidity are a major challenge for the Indian health system, requiring life-long therapy. Innovative approaches such as task-shifting/sharing... Read More

Diabetic Retinopathy

Prof. GVS Murthy (Principal Investigator), Director, IIPH-Hyderabad

Objective: Of the projected 69 million people with diabetes in India, 6 million people are estimated to have sight threatening Diabetic Retinopathy (DR). This is an important and avoidable cause of blindness... Read More

Global burden of Disease

Dr. Lalit Dandona (Principal Investigator), PHFI

Objective: While programmes for disease prevention and control as well as health promotion are underway in many countries, often, they are historically and politically shaped, rather than reflecting... Read More

India’s tobacco-related fiscal policies

Dr. Sakthivel Selvaraj (Principal Investigator), PHFI

Objective: India has a complex tobacco tax structure; there has been a growing interest from state governments to increase taxes on tobacco products as a measure to curtail consumption, although the impact of the same on revenue and consumption was unexplored... Read More

Yoga-CaRe trial

Prof. Prabhakaran D (Principal Investigator), CCCI, PHFI

Objective: Many of the ancient traditions of India such as Yoga can be an answer to the spiralling health care costs and can be used innovatively to address the emerging epidemic of chronic diseases in India... Read More

Yoga for Tobacco Cessation

Dr. Bidyut Sarkar (Principal Investigator), PHFI

Objective: To evaluate, if a brief community outreach intervention (a single session advice of 15 min to stop tobacco use combined with training in yogic breathing exercise) delivered by health workers to promote tobacco cessation in India... Read More