The field of public health has become even more critical in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health professionals must balance strategic thinking with compassionate thinking, and must truly be able to collaborate on the state, national, and global levels. Today, we are joined by physician and scientist Dr. Purnima Madhivanan. Dr. Madhivanan is an Associate Professor of Public Health, Medicine, Psychology, and Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona, as well as a member of the UA’s BIO5 Institute and Cancer Center. She is currently the Director of the MCH program as well as the NIH funded Global Health Equity Scholars (or GHES) Training Program at UA, and she serves as a co-PI for the GHES consortium in collaboration with Stanford, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley. She completed her medical training in India, received a MPH/PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California Berkeley, and completed her postdoctoral training at San Francisco Department of Public Health on Clinical Trials Management. Dr. Madhivanan is an epidemiologist and biomedical researcher examining the intersection of infectious diseases and cancer using -omics technology. Her current work is examining the vaginal and gut microbiome and their role in women's reproductive health.
