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About Us Banner - Reimagining India’s Health System - The Lancet Citizens’ Commission
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Tarun Khanna

Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School; Director, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School
and Director of the Lakshmi Mittal & Family South Asia Institute, Harvard
University. He studies entrepreneurship as a means to social and economic
development across the emerging markets, is a co-founder and board
member of several technology companies and non-profits across the developing
world, and an occasional member of commissions of the Government of India
related to education, scientific advance and entrepreneurship.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Executive Chairperson, Biocon Ltd.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is a pioneering biotech entrepreneur, a healthcare visionary, a global influencer and a passionate philanthropist. She is a pioneer of India’s biotech industry and founder of Biocon. Ms. Mazumdar-Shaw is the proud recipient of two of India's highest civilian honours, the Padma Shri (1989) and the Padma Bhushan (2005). She was also honoured with the Order of Australia, Australia’s Highest Civilian Honour in January 2020. In 2016, she was conferred with the highest French distinction - Knight of the Legion of Honour. She has been named as the winner of EY World Entrepreneur of the Year™ 2020 Award, which is a testimony to her entrepreneurial journey of over four decades. She has been elected as a full-term member of the Board of Trustees of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, and also serves as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), USA.

Vikram Patel

Pershing Square Professor of Global Health, Harvard Medical School; Professor, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; Co-founder, Sangath

Vikram Patel is the Pershing Square Professor of Global Health and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. He co-leads the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative. His work has focused on the burden of mental health problems, their association with social disadvantage, and the use of community resources for their prevention and treatment. He is a co-founder of Sangath, an Indian NGO which won the WHO Public Health Champion of India prize. He is a Fellow of the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences and has served on the Committee which drafted India’s first National Mental Health Policy and the WHO High Level Independent Commission for NCDs. He has been awarded the Chalmers Medal, the Sarnat Prize, the Pardes Humanitarian Prize, an Honorary OBE and the John Dirk Canada Gairdner Award in Global Health. He was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 most influential persons of the year in 2015.

Gagandeep Kang

Clinician Scientist and Professor in the Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College

Gagandeep Kang is Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences at the Christian Medical College, Vellore in southern India. For the past 30 years, she has conducted research on enteric infections in children and their consequences on growth and development. In addition to generating insights into inflammation, intestinal function and the microbiome, she has evaluated a range of interventions from water treatment strategies to vaccination in clinical trials. Her work is internationally recognized, and she serves on multiple advisory committees at the World Health Organisation, for philanthropic organisations and international institutions. She is the chair of the WHO South East Asian Regional Immunization Technical Advisory Group and Vice-Chair of the Board of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Devi Shetty

Chairman, Narayana Hrudayalaya Limited

A cardiac surgeon of repute and a successful entrepreneur, Devi Shetty is a highly respected luminary for his ingenious ideas for reforms in healthcare sector. His visionary leadership to make quality healthcare affordable for all has drawn global recognition. He has worked along with the Government of India, state governments, trade bodies and global policy think tanks to develop vital healthcare policies. A strong advocate of technology for efficient healthcare delivery, Dr.Shetty takes deep interest in creating and developing software products and applications to achieve time and cost efficiency while minimizing clinical errors in healthcare delivery. In association with Karnataka government he pioneered Yeshaswini, a very inexpensive micro health insurance scheme benefitting more than 3.4 million rural poor. Dr. Shetty is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri, The Economist Innovation Award, Ernst and Young – Entrepreneur of the Year, Financial Times Arcelor Mittal ‘Boldness in Business’ Award, Nikkei Asia Prize for Economic and Business Innovation. He has also been awarded honorary doctorates from University of Minnesota, University of Mysore and IIT, Madras.

K Sujatha Rao

Former Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India

Sujatha Rao, a 1974 batch IAS officer is a former Union Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. In her 36 years of service as a civil servant, she spent 20 years in the health sector in different capacities at the state and federal levels.
Ms. Rao was chairperson of the Portfolio Committee of the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM); Member of the Global Advisory Panel of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Founding member of the Public Health Foundation of India; Member of the Advisory Board of the Ministerial Leadership Program of the Harvard School of Public Health and Member of the High Level Panel on Global Risk Framework of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, Trustee of Population Council, USA, Board Member of AIIMS, Raipur, BSNL and served on Boards of UNAIDS and Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria.
Currently, Ms. Rao is Co Chairperson of High Level Expert Committee on Health Reform in AP, Member of the NHSRC, GOI, Board Member of PRITHVI Asset Reconstruction Company, Member on Board of NGO’s and Managing Trustee of the journal “The India Forum”.
She holds an MA from Delhi University, an MPA from Harvard University, USA 1991-92 and was a Takemi Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health 2001-2002 and Gro Harlem Brundtland Senior Leadership Fellow at HSPH in 2012. She is the author of the book entitled “DO We Care? India’s Health System” – published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Nachiket Mor

Visiting Scientist, The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health

Nachiket Mor has a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. His work is focused on the design of national and regional health systems. He is a Visiting Scientist at The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at IIIT Bangalore.

S V Subramanian

Professor of Population Health and Geography, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health

S V (Subu) Subramanian is a Professor of Population Health and Geography at Harvard University, and Chair of the Faculty Advisory Group for the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. He was the Founding Director of Graduate Studies for the interdisciplinary PhD program in Population Health Sciences at Harvard. He is currently an Honorary Senior Fellow of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, Government of India.

K Srinath Reddy

President, Public Health Foundation of India

K.Srinath Reddy is the President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Under his leadership, PHFI has established five Indian Institutes of Public Health (IIPHs) to advance multi-disciplinary public health education, research, health technologies and implementation support for strengthening health systems. He was appointed as the First Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in (2009-13) and presently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard (2014-2023). He holds advisory positions in several national and international bodies and recently published a book Make Health in India: Reaching A Billion Plus. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Emory and Sydney Universities. He is the first Indian to be elected to the National Academy of Medicine, USA and was awarded several prestigious international and national doctorates and fellowships. He was President of the World Heart Federation (2013-15).

Mirai Chatterjee

Director, Social Security Team, Self-Employed Women’s Association [SEWA]

Mirai Chatterjee is the Director of the Social Security Team at Self-Employed Women’s Association, (SEWA). She is also Chairperson of the SEWA Cooperative Federation of 106 women’s primary cooperatives. In addition, she is responsible for SEWA’s health care, child care and insurance programmes. She was Chairperson of the National Insurance VimoSEWA Cooperative Ltd and the Lok Swasthya Health Cooperative, and is actively involved in both as a board member and founder. She joined SEWA in 1984 and was its General Secretary after its Founder, Ela Bhatt.
Ms Chatterjee serves as Chairperson of the global informal workers and policy-makers network, WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment Globalising and Organising), and on the Boards of several organizations, including the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), Save the Children, PRADAN and now the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. She was advisor to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector and is in the Advisory Group on Community Action of the National Rural Health Mission. She was also a Commissioner in the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health. In addition, she was a member of the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage set up by the Planning Commission of India in 2010. Further, she was a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC), appointed by the Prime Minister of India in 2010, she was conferred the Global Achievement award by the School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.
Ms. Chatterjee has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health, USA.

Poonam Muttreja

Executive Director, Population Foundation of India

Poonam Muttreja is the Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India and for the last 40 years has been a strong advocate of women’s health, reproductive & sexual rights and rural livelihoods. She has co-conceived the popular transmedia initiative, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon - I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything. Before joining PFI, she served as the India Country Director of the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation for 15 years and has also co-founded and led the Ashoka Foundation, Dastkar, and the Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI). An alumna of Delhi University and Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, Poonam serves on the governing council of several non-governmental organisations, and is a regular commentator in India and globally for television and the print media.

Sharad Sharma

Executive Director, Population Foundation of India

Sharad Sharma has three decades of experience in the Internet, Enterprise Software, Digital Finance and Digital Health sectors and is a prominent voice in India's technology ecosystem.
He co-founded iSPIRT Foundation, a non-profit technology think tank devoted to making India a product nation. Earlier, he Chaired NASSCOM Product Forum in its formative years and was a member of the NASSCOM Executive Council from 2009-13.
Sharad is an active technology angel investor with over two dozen investments. He was also instrumental in the success of India's first IP focussed fund, India Innovation Fund. Earlier, he had co-founded Teltier Technologies Inc., a wireless infrastructure startup which is now part of CISCO.
He has held several senior R&D executive positions with leading technology companies, including Yahoo, VERITAS Software, Symantec, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T. He is a member of SEBI's Financial and Regulatory Technology Committee. He has also served on RBI's UK Sinha MSME Committee and National Digital Payments Committee.

Armida Fernandez

Retired Professor, Neonatology and Dean, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical Hospital and College, Mumbai; Founder Trustee, SNEHA

Armida Fernandez is the founder and Chairperson of the Society for Nutrition Education and Health Action (SNEHA) that works on the issues of health, nutrition and violence in women and children across urban areas. She was Professor and the Head of the Neonatology Department at Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General (LTMG) Hospital and Medical College for over 25 years and retired as the Dean of the institution. She was also Medical Director of the Holy Family Hospital in Mumbai after her retirement. She has been the President of the National Neonatology Forum.
She has worked extensively on the promotion of breastfeeding and lactation management and started the first Human Milk bank in the country at Sion Hospital in 1989. Her research has been on reducing mortality in newborns with low cost technologies and on issues of health, nutrition and violence in the vulnerable populations in urban slums.

Yamini Aiyar

President and Chief Executive, Centre for Policy Research

Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research, one of India’s oldest and leading think tanks. Yamini’s research works sits at the intersections of research and policy practice. Her research spans the field of social policy (education, health and social protection), governance and public finance, federalism and the study of contemporary politics in India. In 2008, Yamini found the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research. The initiative is credited with pioneering one of India’s largest expenditure tracking surveys for elementary education. Yamini has published in academic journals and the popular press. In addition, she serves on a number of government and international policy committees and boards of non-profits and think tanks. Yamini is an alumna of the London School of Economics, St. Edumunds College, Cambridge University and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Bhushan Patwardhan

Distinguished Professor, Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India; Chair, Interdisciplinary AYUSH Research and Development Task Force of Ministry of AYUSH

Bhushan Patwardhan is a biomedical scientist and distinguished Professor at the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences, Savitribai Phule Pune University, he has made original contributions in evidence-based Ayurveda especially in Ayurvedic biology, AyuGenomics, ethnopharmacology, natural product drug development and integrative approaches to improve public health system. He is founder and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine published by Elsevier. He is recipient of many orations and awards including Sir Ram Nath Chopra Oration and the Waldemar Haffkine Oration. He has received several research grants and has guided 20 PhD students, holds 8 Indian and 2 US Patents, with over 120 publications and 9900 citations. He is currently the Vice Chairman, University Grants Commission; Chairman, Indian Council of Social Science Research; Chairman, Interdisciplinary AYUSH R&D Taskforce, Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India and Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog Committee on Integrative Health System.

Arnab Mukherji

Professor of Public Policy, Center for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore

Arnab Mukherji is a Professor of Public Policy at the Center for Public Policy, IIM Bangalore, and the founding Program Director for the Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship program – an academia-government partnership to build state capacity in district administration. He seeks to combine administrative and survey data to inform public policy, particularly in the domains spanning healthcare, and development economics. He routinely consults with different state governments and, union government ministries in India, and multi-lateral organizations such as the World Bank on matters related to policy design, their implementation, and evaluation.

Thelma Narayan

Director, Academics & Policy Action, SOCHARA

Dr. Thelma Narayan, a medical graduate from St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India, with an MSc. in Epidemiology and doctorate in public health policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
She was a faculty member of the Department of Community Medicine, St. John’s Medical College and later co-initiated the Community Health Cell (CHC) in 1984 and the Society of Community Health Awareness, Research and Action (SOCHARA) in 1991.
She has been an advisor to various national health initiatives including the National Rural Health Mission; a member of the Advisory Group on Community Action for Health from 2005 till date; on the founding governing board of the National Health Systems Resource Centre for one term; member of the national ASHA mentoring group for the first seven years; and member of the National Mental Health Policy Group.
She is active in the People’s Health Movement in India (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan) and globally since their inception in 2000 promoting the Health for All goal.
She was a member of the Measurement and Evidence Knowledge Network of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2005-8) and on the Planning Committee of the Bamako inter-ministerial forum for research on health, development and equity (2008).

Sapna Desai

Associate, Population Council

Sapna Desai is an Associate with the Population Council, India, where her research focuses on women’s health, health systems and community-based interventions. She is co-lead of the Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups and studies to examine how women’s groups improve population health and nutrition outcomes. Sapna has been deeply engaged with generating evidence on and improving health systems delivery for gynaecological morbidity, in partnership with providers, policymakers and advocates over the past decade. She previously worked with the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and its national federation, where she led community health worker and health insurance programs in several states. Dr Desai holds a PhD in epidemiology and population health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and MS from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Leila E Caleb Varkey

Senior Advisor Reproductive Health, Centre for Catalyzing Change

Dr Leila Varkey is a Public Health Researcher and advocate for better women and children’s health. Starting her career as a public health nurse, she went on to complete a full time doctorate in public health and joined Population Council as a Fellow and left 10 years later. Currently she is Senior Advisor Reproductive Health at Centre for Catalyzing Change- C3 India. In 2009-11 she was a member of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage. In the last five years her work designing and implementing quality healthcare improvement programs by public health providers at CHCs, DHs, PHCs and larger teaching hospitals testing at-scale models for better quality of family planning and maternal health care. She has been a member of several the MoHFW’s and ICMRs Task Forces and National Advisory Groups e.g. for SUMAN, LaQshya and the Midwifery Initiatives. Leila is especially interested in the progress of nursing and midwifery as vibrant professions in India through their own professional bodies and associations supporting their career upgrades and leadership capacity.

Vijay Chandru

Professor, Interdisciplinary Research, Indian Institute of Science

Professor Vijay Chandru (PhD MIT) has served on the faculty of engineering at Purdue University and now with interdisciplinary research in digital health at the Indian Institute of Science. An elected fellow of both the Indian academy of sciences and engineering, he is a distinguished alumnus of BITS Pilani and the MIT India program. An inventor of the Simputer, he is a founder of Strand Life Sciences, India’s leading precision medicine solutions company which he led as Executive Chairman from inception in 2000 till retirement in 2018. A technology pioneer of the World Economic Forum since 2006, he served with the IAC of WEF on the future of healthcare from 2014-16. In his work at the Centre for Health Equity and Transparency and OPFORD Foundation, Professor Chandru has been committed to orphan diseases outreach with scalable platforms towards the vision of “no disease orphan by 2030.

Atul Gupta

Assistant Professor, Department of Health Care Management, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Atul Gupta is an Assistant Professor in the department of Health Care Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He joined Wharton in 2017 from Stanford University, where he received his PhD in Economics. His research interests are in Health Care, Public Finance, and Industrial Organization. His current research examines various determinants of productivity in US health care including performance pay for providers, consolidation among providers, and private equity ownership of providers. His previous work has been published in prestigious journals such as the American Economic Review and Health Affairs. Prior to Stanford, Atul received his MBA at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India and worked as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group for several years.

Pamela Das

Senior Executive Editor, The Lancet

Pamela Das joined The Lancet family of journals in 2001. She is currently a Senior Executive Editor at The Lancet, where she co-lead’s the journal’s global health work with the Editor-in-Chief, Richard Horton. This work has led to a new role for the journal—to use organised science as a strong platform for social and political action. Her areas of interest are infectious diseases and tropical medicine, global health, public health, and international health policy. Her roles include peer review, and regularly writing editorials and for other sections of the journal, as well as overseeing The Lancet’s Comment and News sections. Pam is co-Chair of The Lancet’s racial equality group, GRacE and an advisory board member of the Global Health Film Festival. She is a PhD Science graduate in Biochemistry, and prior to working at The Lancet spent a few years as a medical writer and a journalist.

Shubhangi Bhadada

Mittal Institute Fellow, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

Shubhangi Bhadada is the Mittal Institute Fellow at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. She has previously worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia and at a governance think-tank in New Delhi. She was also a Fellow at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and has consulted with Human Rights Watch and International Corporate Accountability Roundtable. She has a B.A. LLB (Hons.) degree from National Law School of India University, Bangalore, India and LLMs from University of Oxford and Harvard Law School.

Pooja Gupta

Lancet Citizens’ Commission Communications Director at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute

Pooja Gupta is the Lancet Citizens’ Commission Communications Director at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute. She is a strategic communications advisor who focuses on communicating evidence and ideas, policy engagement and behaviour change through creative narratives and strategic storytelling. She specialises in managing diverse advocacy and research groups and global non-profits communications.
She previously set up and led the strategic communications unit at the Delhi based think tank, Centre for Policy Research (CPR). Prior to CPR, she has worked with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and TATA Trusts. She is an alumnus of the Institute of Management Technology and Teach India Fellowship.

Dipanwita Sengupta

Consultant, CMC Vellore.

Dr Dipanwita Sengupta is a Consultant for CMC Vellore. She provides research management support for the Evidence Synthesis piece for the Lancet Citizens' Commission. She has 9 years of experience as a grant advisor and research manager. She has developed and led multiple funding programmes for research grants and fellowships and has also been responsible for developing the India Research Management Initiative. After obtaining a Masters’ degree in Microbiology, Dr Sengupta completed PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She further pursued her postdoctoral study on the host-pathogen relationship of a dental pathogen in Virginia Commonwealth University in the USA. She had a short postdoc stint at Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. She made her transition into research management and administration when she joined the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance. She is currently based in Hyderabad, India.

Sanghmitra Singh

Health Scientist and Senior Manager, Knowledge Management and Partnerships at Population Foundation of India

Sanghamitra Singh is a Health Scientist and Senior Manager, Knowledge Management and Partnerships at Population Foundation of India. A scientist by training, but conceptual thinker, communicator and writer by trade, Sanghamitra has experience in evidence-based policy, programmatic design and accompanying research, evaluation and communication. She has authored a number of peer-reviewed articles and National Institutes of Health (NIH)- commissioned studies. She was involved in the drafting of the State Population Policy in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in 2019 and 2020 respectively. At Population Foundation of India, Sanghamitra is the technical expert on health issues, leading the development and dissemination of the Foundation’s literature and publications. She provides strategic insights to programme teams, supports media engagement and works closely with the Executive Director in strengthening and expanding partnerships with key stakeholders.Sanghamitra holds a PhD in Cell Biology from the George Washington University (GWU), Washington D.C. Sanghamitra has previously worked with GWU, NIH Maryland, FDA Maryland and Ajinomoto Corporation, Japan.