Purnima Madhivanan, PhD

Purnima Madhivanan, PhD, is a physician scientist with a Master of Public Health and a doctorate in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the founder of the Public Health Research Institute of India (PHRII) and is also the Director of the Global Health Emerging Scholars Training Program in collaboration with Stanford University, Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley. She also serves as the director for the Fogarty-Fulbright Fellowship program at the University of Arizona.

For the past 25 years, her work has focused on disadvantaged populations, elucidating the dynamics of poverty, gender, and the social and environmental determinants of health, in particular on the impact on women and children living in rural communities. She has worked in India, Peru, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa and in the U.S. To situate her research close to the communities she serves, she established a clinical site in Mysore, India, in 2005 while completing her doctoral dissertation. For over a decade, the Prerana Women’s Health Initiative has delivered low-cost, high-quality reproductive health services to 50,000 low-income women living in Mysore. The Saving Children Improving Lives Program focused on increasing integrated antenatal care and HIV testing services for women in rural and tribal communities using mobile clinics with the help of women’s self-help groups to mobilize and follow-up women. This program model was then adapted to provide cervical cancer screening services in the community in India, which is the only community based cervical cancer screening program in India.

Her current research is examining the intersection of infectious and chronic diseases with a focus on cancer. Her work has resulted in more than 250 peer-reviewed publications. She continues to develop novel lines of research and has been supported by foundations, biotechnology companies, federal and international funding organizations. She is a recipient of multiple national and international awards including the prestigious International Leadership Award from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation for her work on HIV prevention. She is recipient of several teaching and mentoring awards including the Maria Valdez Mentoring Award at the University of Arizona and the Outstanding Mentorship Award from the American College of Epidemiology. Most recently, she was awarded the Gamechanger Award by NAACP and the Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Scholar Award. Madhivanan serves as an advisor to a number of state departments of public health, nonprofit as well as governmental research organizations. Madhivanan has been a principal investigator of multiple federal and foundation grants, as well as a mentor and investigator of numerous National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and industry-sponsored studies and clinical trials.