Short presentation

Overview

I graduated with a Ph.D. in Public Health from Aarhus University, Denmark in 2019. My Ph.D. study investigated the effectiveness of a female community health volunteer-delivered intervention in reducing blood glucose among adults with type 2 diabetes in Nepal. I have previously worked for the World Health Organization, Family Planning Association of Nepal, and UNAIDS Collaborating Centre for socio-epidemiological HIV Research, Japan. I am the recipient of the prestigious ‘Emerging Leaders Award’ awarded by the World Heart Federation in 2020 and the ‘Global Non-communicable Disease (NCD) Scholars Award’ awarded by Johns Hopkins University in 2018.

Research interests and expertise

My research seeks to reduce the burden of NCDs in the community. My substantive research works have been on type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cervical cancer, and mental ill-health and common risk factors for these and other conditions, such as overweight/obesity, diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol and drug use. My recent works have focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating community-based interventions to prevent and control NCDs in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). I am also involved in conceptualizing, designing, implementing, and analyzing rigorous community-based quantitative observational and experimental studies (randomized trials), systematic reviews, meta-analyses as well as qualitative studies focusing on NCDs. I have extensively published my findings in several peer-reviewed journals, which are widely cited in the international research field.

I collaborate on research projects that focus on:

• Piloting a financial literacy component as part of a multi-modal family intervention for refugees in Jordan 
• Understanding how mobility affects forcibly displaced people's continuity of diabetes and hypertension care in Uganda and South Sudan (CONTINUITY)
• Self-regulation and mental health of poverty-affected adolescents in LMICs (ALIVE)
• Support by peers in diabetes and cardiometabolic risk in LMICs (SPIDER)
• Addressing pathway to care for NCDs in Nepal

Conferences and seminars

I have presented my works at different national and international conferences and seminars, including the virtual European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Congress (Vienna, 2020), selected in a Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) Conference (Washington, 2020), International Society of Hypertension (ISH) Scientific Meeting (Beijing, 2018), International Congress of Diabetes and Metabolism (ICDM) (Seoul, 2018), International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Congress (Abu Dhabi, 2017), and Global Conference on Sexual Health (ESC) (Copenhagen, 2013).