3-D Conversation: Sundari Ravindran

TK Sundari Ravindran is currently Principal Visiting Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health, and Visiting Faculty at the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a PhD in Applied Economics and served for twenty years as Professor of Public Health in the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum.

Sundari’s research interests include inequities in health, with a focus on gender-based inequities, sexual and reproductive health and rights, political economy of health, and health systems research. She has been a researcher, activist, and trainer working at the local and international levels for close to four decades. She is founding co-editor of Reproductive Health Matters (now Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters) and is currently a member of its editorial advisory board. She has worked with the World Health Organization in its headquarters and regional offices in various capacities. Sundari is a founder-member of CommonHealth, a National Coalition for Reproductive Health and Safe Abortion (India). She is also a founder Member of Rural Women’s Social Education Centre, a grassroots women’s health organization in Tamil Nadu, and has been involved in the organization’s activities in various capacities since its inception in 1981.

Sandro Galea, a physician, epidemiologist, and author, is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. He previously held academic and leadership positions at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature, and is a regular contributor to a range of public media, about the social causes of health, mental health, and the consequences of trauma. He has been listed as one of the most widely cited scholars in the social sciences. He is past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health and past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. Galea has received several lifetime achievement awards. Galea holds a medical degree from the University of Toronto, graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow.