Devi Sridhar

Professor of Global Public Health

  • Usher Institute
  • College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine

Contact details

Address

Street

Old College
South Bridge

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9YL

Availability

  • Professor Sridhar is receiving a large number of requests from the media at the moment. If you are a journalist, please contact press.office@ed.ac.uk. University of Edinburgh students can still contact Professor Sridhar directly using details in the Outlook directory.

Biography

Background

Devi Sridhar is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh where she holds a Personal Chair in Global Public Health.  She is Founding Director of the Global Health Governance Programme and holds a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award.

Recipient of a Rhodes scholarship, Devi holds an MPhil and a DPhil from Oxford University as well as a B.S. from the University of Miami's Honors Medical Program. Prior to her appointment at Edinburgh, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University and an Associate Professor in Global Health Politics and Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University.

Devi is the author of two books—"Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?" (OUP, 2017) and "The Battle against Hunger: Choice, Circumstance and the World Bank" (OUP, 2007)—and has published her work in Nature, Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. 

Responsibilities & Affiliations

Boards and Panels

Devi has served on the:

  • Board of Save the Children UK
  • World Economic Forum Council on the Health Industry
  • Expert review group of the Wellcome Trust

  • Advisory Board of the Financial Flows Program at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME; UW-Seattle)

Co-Chair:

  • Harvard  School of Public Health/London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola (with Ashish Jha, Muhammad Pate and Peter Piot) and

Fellowships and Visiting Chairs
  • Visiting Faculty at the Public Health Foundation of India
  • Guest lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health 
  • Former visiting Associate Professor at LMU-Munich
  • Associate Fellow at the Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security
  • Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy 
Editorial Responsibilities: 
  • Editorial Board Member for the Journal Public Health. 

Undergraduate teaching

"Global Health" within the University of Edinburgh Medicine programme.

Postgraduate teaching

"Investing in Global Health and Development" elective on the University of Edinburgh's Masters in Public Health programme.

Areas of interest for supervision

Devi supervises student projects through the Global Health Governance Programme.

Topics of interest are aligned to the programme's core areas of focus: international health organizations; financing of global public health and the development of better tools for priority-setting, e.g.:

  • Multilateral investment in a vertical health programme: A case study of the impact of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC) in Nigeria from 1995-2015 (PhD trainee: Janelle Winters)
  • Evaluating the influence and impact of the World Bank’s financial assistance in advancing maternal and child health in India: A case study of the Reproductive and Child Health Project (PhD trainee: Genevie Fernandes)

Research summary

Devi's work focuses on the three core areas of research within the Global Health Governance Programme: improving the effectiveness of international health organizations; tracking financing to global public health and improving global health security. Her work is conducted in close collaboration with Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health and Finance and researchers in countries across the world, as well as policy-makers in international institutions such as the WHO, World Bank and UNICEF.

Devi's current projects include:

  • The Economic Gaze. The World Banks Influence on Global Public Health (Funder: WT Wellcome Trust)
  • RESPIRE:  Global Health Research Unit focussing on respiratory health in Asia (Funder: NIHR)
  • Working group on Global Health Security and Universal Health Coverage (Funder: Georgetown, DfID)

Knowledge exchange

Devi was listed among the top 100 Global Thinker by Lo Spazio della Politica in 2014 for her work with the World Health Organization (WHO) and on multilateralism. She is a regular media commentator on global public health issues.

Affiliated research centres

Devi is a regular media commentator on global public health issues and has contributed to reports and participated in interviews for the BBC World Service, BBC News, Sky News, STV, BBC Radio 4 & 5, BBC Scotland, BBC Wales, BBC Northern Ireland and several other news outlets. 

Video 

Radio

Press 

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