Dr. Niranjan Saggurti, PhD, a demographer, statistician and public health researcher with more than 20 years of experience in program and policy oriented research and evaluations with a special focus on sexual and reproductive health in India. Dr. Saggurti currently provides technical and strategic oversight to Council’s research, evaluation and implementation science work. Prior to this, Dr. Saggurti worked as Senior Program Officer with the Measurement, Learning and Evaluation team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Currently, he is on several core committees of the Indian government, including India FP2020, Ending PMTCT, RMNCAH Coalition and provides technical advisory to a number of research-based NGOs in New Delhi. Dr. Saggurti has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has implemented numerous interventions testing their efficacy and sustainability.

Anil Paul, a management graduate, is a result-oriented, seasoned corporate strategist and a management professional. Paul has held senior management positions for over 30 years in the public and non-profit sectors. In addition to his board responsibilities, he serves as Director of Administration, Finance & Human Resources with Population Council, India. He has led the operations of Population Council for over two decades and has provided leadership during major organizational changes and restructuring at the local level.

Dr. Samiksha Singh is Director Health Services Research. She is an epidemiologist and a fervent public health specialist with 14+ years of experience in maternal and neo-natal health, early childhood development, infections, HIV, health systems and quality improvement in India.

She has led evaluations of complex public health programs and health systems research. They evaluated Dakshata and SCSL programs for quality improvement in clinical practice in labour rooms and newborn care units across public and private hospitals. Her other related research includes evaluation of obstetric referral systems, maternal and peri-natal death reviews, peri-conception health care and utilization of maternal and child health services. Samiksha has 10+ years of direct engagement with governments, and other partners for framing policy, implementing programs, and building collaborations for ending preventable maternal mortality.

Prior to joining the Council, Samiksha worked with PHFI. She led the ‘Advanced Collaboration for Early Childhood Development and Empowerment’ that brings experts from all over the country for policy formulation, program strategies, capacity building, and research inclusive of children with special needs. The collaborative supported state of Telangana in developing a road map for comprehensive ECD program, followed by a pilot implementation of an integrated community-based intervention for ECD in partnership between H&FW, WDCW, and Panchayati Raj. Her work with National Neonatology Forum included capacity building of Special Newborn Care Units in 4 states and SNCU-DEIC linkages for follow-ups.

Samiksha holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; an MD in Community Medicine from University College of Medical Sciences, and MBBS from Lady Hardinge Medical College from Delhi University. She has published 30+ articles in peer-reviewed journals and she also serves as an academic editor for Plos One and reviewer to several esteemed journals.

Publication

Singh S, Kannuri NK, Mishra A, Gaikwad L, Shukla R, Tyagi M, Chamarthy S. Effect of WHO-SCC based intra-department mentoring program on quality of intrapartum care in public sector secondary hospitals in Andhra Pradesh, India: Pre-post mixed methods evaluation. Plos Global Public Health. 2022;2(8): e0000530. DOI:10.1371/journal.pgph.0000530

Zamboni K, Singh S, Tyagi M, Hill Z, Hanson C, Schellenberg J. Effect of collaborative quality improvement on stillbirths, neonatal mortality and newborn care practices in hospitals of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, India: evidence from a quasi-experimental mixed-methods study. Implementation Science. 2021 January;16:4.DOI:10.1186/s13012-020-01058-z

Hanson C, Zamboni K, Prabhakar V, Sudke A, Shukla R, Tyagi M, Singh S, Schellenberg J. Evaluation of the Safe Care, Saving Lives (SCSL) Quality Improvement collaborative for neonatal health in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, India: a study protocol. Glob Health Action. 2019;12(1):1581466. DOI:10.1080/16549716.2019.1581466.

Singh S, Doyle P, Campbell OM, Murthy GVS. Management and referral of high-risk women and women with complications during the antenatal period: Knowledge, attitude and practices survey of providers in rural public healthcare in two states of India. Reproductive Health. 2019 July 10;16(1):100. DOI:10.1186/s12978-019-0765-y

Singh S, Doyle P, Campbell OM, Rao GVR, Murthy GVS. Inter-facility transfer of pregnant women using publicly-funded emergency call-centre based ambulance services: a cross-sectional analysis of service logs from five states in India. BMJ open. 2017 Jun 9;7(6):e015077. DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2016-015077

Dr. Arabinda Mishra, PhD, is a trained economist with over 25 years of experience in research, teaching/training, and academic administration in the field of sustainable development, livelihoods, adaptation, and resilience building. Dr. Mishra has served in leadership role across multiple institutions of repute such as International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), The Energy Resource Institute (TERI), and Centre for Multi-disciplinary Development Research (CMDR). At ICIMOD, as a theme leader, he was leading research and implementation of multi-country projects on mountain livelihoods and resilience-building solutions. Before joining ICIMOD in June 2015, he was Dean of the Faculty of Policy and Planning, TERI University (2005-2015) and had the concurrent responsibility of Director, Earth Science and Climate Change Division in The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) during 2008?2013 at New Delhi, India. At TERI, he was leading TERI’s engagement with the Government of India as well as a number of State governments in the preparation of action plans on climate change. As the project leader of the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation Study in South Asia (ESPASSA), he was involved in an international collaboration of scientists from various disciplines that investigated the links between ecosystems and poverty in South Asia to identify ways in which the poor are dependent on the services provided by ecosystems in the region. He has acted as the lead researcher in an IDPAD (Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development)-funded study on common property water resources in rural India that brought out key insights regarding the functioning of water markets and community management institutions. He was also a Member, Working Group on Management of Natural Resources and Rainfed Farming, and Chairperson of Sub-Group V on Climate Change Mainstreaming, 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), set up by the Planning Commission, Govt of India.

Publications

Maharjan A, S Adhikari, R Ahmad, U Ahmad, Z Ali, S Bajracharya, J Baniya, S Bhattarai, A Gautam, E Gilmore, H M Ko, N Myat, T Myint, P S Mahapatra, A Mishra, C Singh (2022): Air pollution exposure and its impacts on everyday life and livelihoods of vulnerable urban populations in South Asia  Environ. Res. Commun. 4 071002  

Maharjan A. , S Tuladhar , A Hussain , A Mishra , S Bhadwal , S Ishaq , B A Saeed , I Sachdeva , B Ahmad , J Ferdous & S M T Hassan (2021): Can labour migration help households adapt to climate change? Evidence from four river basins in South Asia, Climate and Development   

Rao N., A Mishra, A Prakash, C Singh, A Qaisrani, P Poonacha, K Vincent & C Bedelian (2019): A qualitative comparative analysis of women’s agency and adaptive capacity in climate change hotspots in Asia and Africa, Nature Climate Change, Vol. 9, 964-971  

Mishra A. et al. (2019) Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Stronger Action Urgently Needed. In: Wester P., Mishra A., Mukherji A., Shrestha A. (eds) The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Springer, Cham. DOI  

Banerjee S., R Black, A Mishra & D Kniveton (2019), Assessing vulnerability of remittance?recipient and nonrecipient households in rural communities affected by extreme weather events: Case studies from South?West China and North?East India, Population, Space and Place, Wiley.  

Dr. Nizamuddin Khan has a PhD in population studies from International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai and two Master’s degrees in Statistics with Computer Programming, and Population Studies (MPS). His 20+ years of experience includes health program evaluations, operations research design, development of M&E systems for health interventions, and quantitative data analysis using SPSS and STATA. He has several years of experience coordinating the large-scale surveys, initially with the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and District Level Household Surveys (DLHS), and recently leading the field implementation of Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) in India. He has several publications to his credit. He also worked with the World Bank, IIPS, Futures Group International in the past leading the implementation of research studies in the field.

Publications

Jolivet, R. R., Gausman, J., Adanu, R., Bandoh, D., Belizan, M., Berrueta, M. Chakraborty S., Kenu E., Khan N., … & Langer, A. (2022). Multisite, mixed methods study to validate 10 maternal health system and policy indicators in Argentina, Ghana and India: a research protocol. BMJ open, 12(1), e049685.

Sachdev, H. S., Porwal, A., Acharya, R., Ashraf, S., Ramesh, S., Khan, N., … & Sarna, A. (2021). Haemoglobin thresholds to define anaemia in a national sample of healthy children and adolescents aged 1–19 years in India: a population-based study. The Lancet Global Health, 9(6), e822-e831.

Sarna, A., Porwal, A., Ramesh, S., Agrawal, P. K., Acharya, R., Johnston, R., N. Khan,… & Saxena, R. (2020). Characterisation of the types of anaemia prevalent among children and adolescents aged 1–19 years in India: a population-based study. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 4(7), 515-525.

Khan, N., & Saggurti, N. (2020). Socioeconomic inequality trends in childhood vaccination coverage in India: findings from multiple rounds of National Family Health Survey. Vaccine, 38(25), 4088-4103.

Khan, N., Mozumdar, A., & Kaur, S. (2020). Determinants of low birth weight in India: An investigation from the National Family Health Survey. American Journal of Human Biology, 32(3), e23355.

Dr. Rajib Acharya is a statistician, demographer, public health specialist, and policy advisor with more than two decades of experience in public health research, and planning, designing, managing, and monitoring large-scale studies. Dr. Acharya is an expert in designing and implementing large-scale sample surveys, longitudinal studies on population, health, and nutrition. He has been instrumental in designing, managing, and conducting several unique, first-ever national and sub-national studies in India. He also designed evaluation studies using various experimental and non-experimental designs and applied advanced statistical techniques to measure impact. Dr. Acharya has authored over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles, books and chapters, and scientific reports; and serves as reviewer of several international journals, including The Lancet, the Lancet Global Health, BMJ, Plos One, and BMC Women’s Health.

Dr. Santhya is an economist and population scientist with almost three decades of experience in conducting research that builds strategies to improve adolescent girls’ reproductive and sexual health, gender-based violence, and maternal health. She also builds capacity of researchers and program implementers. Dr. Santhya has extensive experience designing and conducting qualitative and quantitative studies on the rights of youth, gender equity, reproductive health, and gender-based violence. She has published several book chapters, international peer-reviewed journal articles, and study reports.

Dr. Sapna Desai is an epidemiologist and public health practitioner whose areas of interest are women’s health, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and implementation and evaluation of community-based programs and health systems. Her current work focuses on examining the effect of women’s group interventions on health outcomes; epidemiology and treatment-seeking for gynecological morbidity; and women’s engagement with health systems through the life cycle. Dr. Desai previously spent several years working with the Self-Employed Women’s Association, an organization of women workers in the informal economy, where she led the national community health worker team that implemented primary health and health insurance programs in several states. She holds a Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an MS in International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Avishek Hazra is a demographer and statistician with over 15 years of experience in public health research and program evaluations. . He completed his Master’s in statistics and received a fellowship award from the Government of India that helped him earn an MPhil and PhD in Population Studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences,  Mumbai, a Deemed University under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. He was given the prestigious Dr. C. Chandrasekaran Award as an honor of ‘Young Demographer of the Year 2008’. He is currently leading several behavioral studies focusing on issues around reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, nutrition, sanitation, women empowerment and m-health studies. He has valuable experience in leading many complex health interventions evaluations, an important one being the evaluation of interventions with women’s self-help groups. He has also worked in an Indo-US collaborative contraceptive Phase 3 clinical trial in India. Hazra has published more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited several books. He is member of various professional academic forums and has served as a technical advisor to the World Health Organization.

Dr. Sowmya Ramesh is an epidemiologist and public health researcher with more than 18 years of experience in maternal and neonatal health, nutrition, sanitation, environmental & occupational health, HIV, financial inclusion, and skill development. She has experience in conducting national and international quantitative and qualitative research studies and impact evaluations and implementing projects of national importance. Previously, Dr. Ramesh worked as Monitoring & Research Officer at United Nations Development Program (UNDP), India and served as a Moderator & Resource Person for UN Solution Exchange. Dr. Ramesh has authored and co-authored over 25 publications. Dr. Ramesh has a MPH degree in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health and an MPH from Texas A & M University Health Science Center.

Punit Mishra is part of Population Council Consulting’s MLE team and leads the Research and Analyses for Scientific Transformation and Advancement (RASTA) initiative. He is a statistician, demographer, and RMLE expert with more than 13 years of experience in public health, nutrition, education, and WASH domains. He has designed and managed process and outcome monitoring systems and conducted evaluation studies measuring impact of several social programmes.

Prior to joining Population Council Consulting, Punit served as the Lead-Research, Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation (RMLE) at Piramal Foundation, where he managed the Aspirational Districts Transformation (NITI Aayog) and Tribal Health Collaborative’s RMLE portfolios. Punit has worked at RTI International and Abt Associates on different evaluation projects funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID). His experiences in these projects include working with clients in the National and State Governments, multi-lateral donors, and non-profit organizations across India and Africa. He has also taught statistics and research methods courses at University of Delhi. He has conducted several training sessions on RMLE, data analytics and data quality audits (DQAs) for government stakeholders, partners, and program teams.

Punit has travelled extensively in India and represented his organizations at international forums in the US, UK, Africa, and South-Asia. He is an active member of various professional academic forums. He currently serves as MLE advisory committee member to USAID Samagra.

Publications

Mishra, P., Hegde, S., Ram, U., Pradhan, M., Basu, T., Dogra, V. (2020). District Factsheets: Health and Nutrition Indicators for the Tribal and Non-Tribal Population, 2015-16: Compendium.

Mishra P, Ray Saraswati L, Baker M, Mishra A, Bhandari P, Rai A, Chandan A, Crockett M, Pelly L, Anthony J, Shetye M, Krotki K, Kraemer J. (2020). ‘Know-Can’ gap: gap between knowledge and skills related to childhood diarrhoea and pneumonia among frontline workers in rural Uttar Pradesh, India. Trop Med Int Health, 25(4):454-466. doi: 10.1111/tmi.13365. Epub 2020 Jan 18. PMID: 31863613.

Mishra, P. (2012). Institutional delivery in India. Intrastate variations in Uttar Pradesh: 1998–2008. Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing.

Mishra, P. (2012). Poverty and public/private divide in institutional delivery care in India. In U.V. Somayajulu, G.K., Panda, R. Kar, P. Mishra, & Singh, K.K. (Eds.), Population, reproductive and child health: Perspectives and challenges (105–115). New Delhi, India: Serials Publications.

Priyanka Thakur is a seasoned Human Resources (HR) professional with over a decade of rich experience in the development sector. She has done her MBA in HR from the Indian School of Business Management and Administration (ISBM) and has completed Strategy Performance Management Course from XLRI. She has worked as HR lead in various international non-governmental organization’s from Sesame Workshop. She has a rich experience of managing different facets of HR – strategic planning, recruitment, on boarding, organizational development, PMS, Payroll, internal and external communication. Priyanka is passionate about her work and describes herself as a people’s person. She is also passionate about travelling and exploring new destinations

Shruthi is a development professional with nearly 7 years of experience working in government and non-government sector projects, predominantly in the areas of gender inclusion and rural development and livelihood. She holds a master’s degree in development studies from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Prior to joining PopulationCouncil Consulting, Shruthi led the monitoring vertical at Swasti and Kudumbashree NRO. She has been instrumental in developing community-based monitoring systems as well as designing a survey to assess the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on rural micro-enterprises for Kudumbashree NRO. This survey design was later used by the Kerala State Mission to assess the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on micro-enterprises within the state.

Dr. Abhishek Kumar is demographer and public health researcher whose areas of interest are adolescents sexual and reproductive health, fertility and family planning, maternal healthcare utilization, childhood nutrition and mortality, abortion & post-abortion contraceptive use, and migration and family planning. Abhishek is currently working on several research areas, with a focus on exploring the role of the private sector in family planning services, generating evidence on cross cutting issues on contraceptive use, and understanding adolescents’ vulnerability in sexual and reproductive health. His research work expands across all the states of India, with a special focus on Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Abhishek has authored more than 30 scientific manuscripts in peer reviewed international journals and presented over 40 research papers in prestigious international conferences in the field of demography and public health including Population Association of America (PAA), International Union for Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP). Abhishek has been a participant of the Young Scientist Summer Program (YSSP) conducted by the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Vienna, Austria and Policy Communication Fellow at Population Reference Bureau, Washington DC, USA. He holds a PhD in demography from the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, India.

Publications

Shukla A, Acharya R, Kumar A, Mozumdar A, Aruldas K, Saggurti N. Client- provider interaction: Understanding client’s experience with family planning service providers through mystery client approach in India. (2020). Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters. 28(1):1822492.

Kumar A, Jain AK, Ram F, Acharya R, Shukla A, Mozumdar A, Saggurti N. Health workers’ outreach and intention to use contraceptives among married women in India. (2020). BMC Public Health. 20(1):1041

Kumar A, Gautam A, Dey A, Saith R, Uttamacharya, Achyut P, Gautam V, Agarwal D, Chakraverty A, Mozumdar A, Aruldas K, Verma R, Nanda P, Krishnan S, Saggurti N. Infection prevention preparedness and practices for female sterilization services within primary care facilities in Northern India. (2020). BMC Health

Kumar A, Muttarak R, Bordone V. Like mother(-in-law) like daughter? Influence of the older generation’s fertility behaviours on women’s desired family size in Bihar, India. (2015). Europian Journal of Population. 32(5):629–660.

Kumar A, Kumari D, Singh A. Increasing socioeconomic inequality in childhood undernutrition in urban India: Trends between 1992-93, 1998-99, and 2005-06. (2014). Health Policy and Planning. 30(8):1003-1016.

Neelanjana Pandey is a Senior Program Manager at PopulationCouncil Consulting Pvt. Ltd., India. She coordinates and manages research programmes related to adolescents’ lives, particularly focusing on their education, work participation, marriage, and sexual and reproductive health issues. Pandey specializes in population sciences and statistics and has been a key contributor to designing experimental and quantitative studies. In this role, she coordinates the execution of studies undertaken and monitors progress, conducts complex quantitative data analyses, disseminates findings at various forums and liaisons with stakeholders. She is currently leading an evaluation of a Gender Integration Pilot program in a government-supported women’s collective system in Bihar, India. She is also leading the India study site as part of a multi-country evaluation of the Girl First Fund program. At Population Council, she contributed to a longitudinal study of adolescents aged 10–19 years in the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (UDAYA: Understanding Lives of Adolescent and Young Adults). Before joining the Council, Pandey was a monitoring and evaluation consultant at UNICEF, India, where she implemented and monitored a large-scale rapid survey on children across all states of India.

She has presented more than 10 scientific papers internationally and is the author of more than 18 peer-reviewed papers, technical reports, policy briefs and book chapters.

Pandey holds an MA in statistics from Banaras Hindu University and a PhD in population studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai.

Publications

GIRL Center Research Brief

K.G. Santhya, R. A., Neelanjana Pandey, Ashish Kumar Gupta, Shilpi Rampal, Santosh Kumar Singh, A.J. Francis Zavier (2017). “Executive Summary: Understanding the lives of adolescents and young adults (UDAYA) in Uttar Pradesh, India (2015–16).”

Melnikas, A.J., G. Saul, M. Chau, N. Pandey, J. Mkandawire, M. Gueye, A. Diarra, and S. Amin. 2021. “More Than Brides Alliance: Endline Evaluation Report.” New York: Population Council

Neelanjana Pandey, K. S., Andrea J. Melnikas (2019). “Examining early marriage in India: Qualitative findings.”

Rajib Acharya, M. G., Thoai Ngo, Neelanjana Pandey, Sangram Kishor Patel, Jessie Pinchoff, Shilpi Rampal, Niranjan Saggurti, K.G. Santhya, Corinne White, A.J. Francis Zavier (2020). “COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices among adolescents and young people in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India: Study description.”

Sapna Desai, Neelanjana Pandey. (2017). “Ensuring adolescents in Uttar Pradesh stay—and learn—in school.”

Surendra is a qualified professional with 20+ years of experience in the development sector. He has extensive experience in managing projects, preparing tools for qualitative and quantitative research, conducting research, implementing intervention activities and liaising with government and non-government organizations, CBOs and community stakeholders. Prior to joining the Population Council, Surendra worked with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the International Institute for Population Sciences, and the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW). Surendra holds a master’s in social science from Dr. Rammanohar Lohia Avadh University, Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh.

Dr. Basant Kumar Panda is a statistician and demographer with extensive experience in data management and analysis. Prior to joining Population Council Consulting Pvt. Ltd. as a Technical Specialist, he was a research consultant at Population Council. He has a PhD in population studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai and master’s degrees in statistics from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. He is well versed in the use of statistical software like STATA and SPSS and has worked on various large-scale data sets. He has authored/co-authored 20 articles in peer-reviewed international/national journals and attended various international conferences in India and abroad. His areas of interest are ageing, health financing and maternal and child health in the Indian context.

Publications

Panda B.K. and Mohanty S.K. (2018). Progress and Prospects of Health Related SDGs in India. Journal of Biosocial Science, 51(3):335-352

Mohanty, S. K., Panda, B. K., Khan, P. K., & Behera, P. (2019). Out-of-pocket expenditure and correlates of caesarean births in public and private health centers in India. Social Science & Medicine. 245 45-57.

Panda, B.K., Kumar, G. & Awasthi, A. District level inequality in reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health coverage in India. BMC Public Health 20, 58 (2020)

Panda,B.K. , & Mishra, U.S. (2021). Unnatural death in India. Journal of Biosocial Science,1-12.

Panda, B. K. Ram F., Singh G. Sagruti N., (2021). Intention to use Contraception among women in unmet need and not in unmet need in India., Demography India, 49(2), 23-34

Sohini Paul is a Senior Program Manager at Population Council, Delhi. She is a development economist by training with more than 20 years of experience in public policy research. Her primary research interests include gender, health, food security, political economy, and empirical econometrics.  Currently, Sohini is working on costing and cost-effectiveness analysis of women’s groups, maternal and child health and nutrition, and health systems in the Indian context, conducting implementation research on the school-to-work transitions programs for adolescent girls.

As a member of the global Evidence Consortium on Women’s Groups, Sohini works on costing and cost-effectiveness analyses of women’s groups, focusing on India’s National Rural Livelihoods Mission. She also co-leads a collaborative initiative to generate evidence on implementing school-based interventions to improve labour force participation and economic empowerment amongst young girls in Bihar.

In the past, Sohini co-led a program of work on Maternal, New-born and Child Health (MNCH) in India which aimed to deepen the knowledge of MNCH through in-depth analyses of various relevant data sets; support a new generation of MNCH researchers, and disseminate the knowledge generated.

Before joining the Council, Sohini worked as a fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), one of India’s oldest think tanks. She has led evaluations of government welfare schemes, including food security programs. During the process, Sohini worked closely with governments of state and central government ministries in India. She served on technical advisory committees of the United Nations Food Program and Niti Ayog for evaluating food security programs in India.

Sohini was an ICCR Chair Professor at Norman Peterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Canada.

Sohini was a post-doctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia, Canada. She holds a PhD in Economics from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), India.

Radhika Dayal is a public health practitioner and qualitative researcher with a decade of research and management experience. She conducts multi-component mixed method evaluations that focus on issues like reducing child marriage and teenage pregnancy; increasing comprehensive sexuality education and increasing female employment in India. She has extensive experience in project management and is proficient in conducting qualitative studies, systematic reviews, and evidence synthesis on girls’ empowerment, gender-based violence, and adolescent sexual and reproductive health. She has experience in using different monitoring and evaluation approaches like conducting impact and process evaluation, and using participatory research methods like mystery clients and youth engagement.

Prior to joining the Population Council as Technical Specialist, Radhika worked with John Snow Inc. (JSI), India office and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Radhika holds a Masters in Sociology from Delhi School of Economics, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Epidemiology, Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi, PHFI.

Publications

Dayal R, Gundi M (2022). Assessment of the quality of sexual and reproductive health services delivered to adolescents at Ujala clinics: A qualitative study in Rajasthan, India. PLoS ONE 17(1): e0261757.

Choudhry V, Dayal R, Pillai D, Kalokhe AS, Beier K, Patel V. (2018)  Child sexual abuse in India: A systematic review. PLoS One13(10).

Dayal R., Kalokhe, A. S., Choudhry, V., Pillai, D., Beier, K., & Patel, V. (2018)  Ethical and definitional considerations in research on child sexual violence in India. BMC Public Health.

Negandhi H, Negandhi P, Zodpey SP, Kulatilaka H, Dayal R, Hart LJ and Grewe M. (2017)  How Do Master of Public Health Programs Teach Monitoring and Evaluation? Front. Public Health 5:136.

Rottach E, Pappa S, Dayal R & Das M. (2017)  Deconstructing gender: evidence on how programmes address gender inequalities to improve health, Development in Practice, 27:2, 168-180.

Raman Mishra is a data scientist trained in Biostatistics and Demography. Raman has extensive experience of data management, analysis and predictive modelling. He is well versed in the use of statistical softwares like Python, R, STATA, and SPSS. He has worked on data from multiple countries and has expertise in the application of advanced statistical analysis such as latent class/profile analysis, multilevel modelling, and geo-spatial analysis. Besides being a number cruncher, Raman is adept in scientific writing. He has authored peer-reviewed journal articles on non-communicable diseases, social capital and disability. His areas of interest are ageing, family planning, poverty, and climate change.

Publications

Mathur S, Mishra R., Mahapatra B, Heck C. J., okal, J (2022). Assessing layered HIV prevention programming: Optimizing outcomes for adolescent girls and young women. AIDS 36 (5).

Mahapatra, B., Saggurti, N., Mishra, R., Walia, M., & Mukherjee, S. (2020). Migration and family planning in the state with highest total fertility rate in India. BMC Public Health, 20(1), 1-9.

Monica., Mishra, R. (2020) “An Epidemiological Study of Cervical and Breast Screening in India: District Level Analysis”. BMC Women’s Health, 20(1), 30.

Chanda, S., & Mishra, R. (2019). “Impact of transition in work status and social participation on cognitive performance among elderly in India”. BMC Geriatrics, 19(1), 251.

Mishra, R., & Monica. (2019) “Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease and Sequential Decision-Making for Treatment among Women: A Heckman’s Approach” SSM-Population Health, 7, 100365.

Bishwajit is a qualified professional with demonstrated leadership in the development sector for 12 years. He is a management and analytics professional working in the domain of Public Health. He has diverse  experience in the field of  planning, designing, leading, coordinating, liasoning and implementation for maternal and child health programs across the states of Jharkhand and Bihar.

Dr. Sudeshna Maitra is an evaluation specialist. Prior to this, Dr. Maitra was a research associate at the National Institute of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, Ministry of Rural Development, Hyderabad.

She is well versed with econometrics and other evaluation tools and is trained in handling large datasets. She completed her PhD in Economics from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2020. She also holds an M.Phil in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research domain includes gender economics, household behaviour and family economics, education, gender and nutrition, agriculture and rural development.

Sharmada Sivaram is a researcher in public health, with an expertise in qualitative methods. She has over five years of experience in examining a range of issues in Indian public health, particularly women’s health and health systems. Prior to joining as a Technical Specialist, Sharmada consulted with the Population Council on qualitative research components within studies on women’s groups and health interventions, community engagement initiatives to improve women’s access to health insurance. She also documented strategies within a WHO-led project to support 19 countries in ensuring continued access and coverage to RMNCAH services during the COVID-19 pandemic. She has previously worked with the Public Health Foundation of India on environmental health and health policy research.  

Sharmada holds an MSc. in Public Health for Development from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK) where her dissertation examined the role of female sterilization in Indian family planning policy and programme using qualitative research methods.  She also holds an MA in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (India). Some of her areas of interest include women & health, reproductive health and rights, community health workers and health systems.

Sushmita Singh

Sushmita is working as a research analyst at Population Council Consulting. She holds a master’s degree in Development and Labor Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honors) degree in Economics from Indraprastha College for Women, Delhi University. Prior to joining the Council, she was a part of projects on social security schemes and Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) at the Confederation of Indian Industry and National Skill Development Corporation. She also has entrepreneurial experience of running a food truck in NCR. She has keen intertest in classical dance and enjoys writing and exploring historical places.

Gaurav is a Data Scientist with 1.5+ years of experience in building data-intensive applications, overcoming complex architectural design and scalability issues in the industry. Proficient in predictive modelling, data processing, natural language processing and data mining algorithms, as well as scripting languages including Python, Javascript and C++ with OOPS design principles. Gaurav is capable of creating, developing, testing and deploying highly adaptive diverse services to translate business and functional qualifications into substantial deliverables.

Mahika is a research analyst having expertise in public policy and econometrics. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy degree from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. She has worked on randomized control trials with J-PAL and is well versed with statistical analysis and survey coding. Besides analytics, she has published a paper on ‘The World Trade Organisation: Developing countries availing special and differential treatment’ and has been part of the BRICS Academic Forum 2021 at Observer Research Foundation.

Sinjini is Postgraduate in MBA with specialization in Finance, having more than 14 years of qualitative professional experiences in the arena of Accounts, Administration & Financial Management of Projects, Grants in Not Profit Sectors. Her prime responsibilities are managing the accounting and finance systems for implemented projects, monitoring grants and budgets, and actual project management, audits etc.

Prior joining Population Council as Manager, Grants & Finance, she worked with Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) India as Finance Officer; National Law University, Delhi (NLUD) as Finance and Administrative Coordinator in Project 39A, Fair Trial Fellowship Programme; and as Senior Finance Assistant in International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) India.

Ananya MSW, is a social researcher with nearly eight years of experience in qualitative research, capacity building, and storytelling. She has worked on a range of issues including education, food security, economic collectives, and menstrual health and hygiene. During her William J. Clinton Fellowship 2018-19 with public middle schools in rural Bihar, she applied storytelling techniques to identify in-depth information on sanitation and menstrual health from adolescent girls. Working with Adivasis – with special attention to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) communities in Jharkhand, she has explicated her evidence-based policy advocacy domain. She is trained in Scientific Research Writing and in Gender Equity for Inclusive design.