PHFI

Additional Professor

Prof. Rakhi Dandona has been a lead investigator on epidemiological studies on injuries, HIV/AIDS, blindness and mortality estimation for over a decade including studies involving multi-country collaborations.  She has extensive experience in the design and conduct of epidemiology studies in India and has led a variety of quantitative and qualitative analyses.  She is increasingly developing research in the social determinants of health and plans to develop major research and capacity building program for injuries research.  Prof. Dandona has held several grants for population health research in India including from the Wellcome Trust, UK and the National Institutes of Health, USA.  She has published over 75 peer-reviewed papers from this research including in the Lancet, WHO Bulletin and BMC Medicine, and has served as a scientific reviewer for over two dozen journals.  Dr. Dandona is on the Editorial Board for the journal Injury Prevention. 

Prior to joining PHFI, she was the Head of Population Health Research Division at the George Institute for International Health – India, Hyderabad and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney School of Public Health. She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne.  Prof. Dandona is particularly interested in contributing to research and training activities that promote a sustainable research environment in India to deal effectively with the disease burden and health system priorities.  She is involved with supervision of graduate and post-graduate students, and has also served as a mentor in the MENTOR-VIP programme of the World Health Organization.

Publications

• Dandona L, Katoch VM, Dandona R.  Research to achieve health care for all in India.  Lancet 2011;377:1055-57.
• Dandona R, Kumar GA, Ameer MA, Ahmed GM, Dandona L.  Incidence and burden of road traffic injuries in urban India.  Injury Prevention 2008;14:354-359.
• Dandona R, Kumar GA, Ameer MA, Reddy BN, Dandona L.  Underreporting of road traffic crashes to the police: comparison of two data sources from urban India.  Injury Prevention 2008;14:360-365.
• Dandona L, Dandona R, Kumar GA, Reddy GB, Ameer MA, Ahmed GM, Ramgopal SP, Akbar M, Sudha T, Lakshmi V.  Risk factors associated with HIV in a population-based study in Andhra Pradesh state of India. International Journal of Epidemiology 2008;37:1274-1286.
• Dandona L, Lakshmi V, Sudha T, Kumar GA, Dandona R.  A population-based study of HIV in south India reveals major differences from sentinel surveillance based estimates. BMC Medicine 2006;4:31.  http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/4/31.
• Dandona L, Lakshmi V, Kumar GA, Dandona R.  Is the HIV burden in India being overestimated? BMC Medicine 2006;6:308. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/6/308.
• Dandona L, Dandona R, Gutierrez JP, Kumar GA, McPherson S, Bertozzi SM, ASCI FPP Study Team.  Sex behaviour of men who have sex with men and risk of HIV in Andhra Pradesh, India.  AIDS 2005;19:611-619.
• Dandona R, Dandona L.  Refractive error blindness [invited]. Bulletin of World Health Organization 2001;79:237-243.
• Dandona R, Dandona L, Naduvilath TJ, Srinivas M, McCarty CA, Rao GN.  Refractive errors in an urban population in southern India: the Andhra Pradesh Eye Disease Study. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 1999;40:2810-2818.
• Dandona L, Dandona R, Naduvilath TJ, McCarty CA, Nanda A, Srinivas M, Mandal P, Rao GN.  Is the current eye care policy focus almost exclusively on cataract adequate to deal with blindness in India?  Lancet 1998;351:1312-1316.