October theme: Women in Health
Speaker
Suneeta Krishnan, PhD
Deputy Director, India Country Office, Gates Foundation
Suneeta Krishnan is a social epidemiologist and global health leader with more than 25 years of experience spanning academic research, institutional leadership, and philanthropic strategy. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB summa cum laude in Biological Sciences from Barnard College of Columbia University. Her research examined how poverty, gender, and social inequity shape women’s health — including unintended pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, intimate partner violence, and noncommunicable diseases. Across 45 peer-reviewed publications, she demonstrated how inequitable norms and constrained resources sustain cycles of poor health and established health services as a viable entry point for addressing intimate partner violence in India. She received the 2004 US Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for this body of work. Dr. Krishnan has held academic appointments at the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley, served as Visiting Professor at the James P Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University, and as Adjunct Professor at St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore. She was a Scientific and Research Collaborator at the Harvard Global Equity Initiative and a member of the WHO’s Gender and Rights Advisory Panel from 2013 to 2019. For the past decade, she has led strategy, planning, measurement, and evaluation at the Gates Foundation’s India Country Office, where she has also established the office’s approach to measuring and evaluating artificial intelligence for development. She has served on WHO, government, and civil society advisory bodies and speaks regularly on evidence use in global health policy.
Description
Drawing on nearly ten years at the Gates Foundation’s India Country Office, this talk will explore efforts to strengthen reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health services in two of India’s most populous states. It will examine how evidence shifted the focus from expanding access to ensuring effective, equitable and respectful care, while addressing persistent challenges in quality, workforce capability, referral systems, supply chains and data use. The talk will also consider what long-term technical assistance must leave behind to sustain progress, including stronger institutional capacity, evidence-informed decision-making and implementation research.
Series Goals
The Global Partner Spotlight webinar series is part of the IGHS Connect program. The Global Partner Spotlight series highlights the work of UCSF IGHS partners around the world. The sessions provide a window into the priorities, challenges, and innovations of our collaborators in-country.
For questions, please contact: IGHSConnect@ucsf.edu