Purnima Madhivanan is an Associate Professor in Health Promotion Sciences at the Mel & Enid College of Public Health at University of Arizona. She is a physician scientist with MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, USA. She is the Founder of Public Health Research Institute of India (PHRII) and is also the Director of the Global Health Emerging Scholars (GHES) Training Program in collaboration with Stanford, Yale and University of California, Berkeley. She also serves as the Director for the Fogarty-Fulbright Fellowship program at University of Arizona.

For the past 25 years, her work has focused on disadvantaged populations, elucidating the dynamics of poverty, gender, and the social and environmental determinants of health, in particular on the impact on women and children living in rural communities. She has worked in India, Peru, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa and in the US. To situate her research close to the communities she serves, she established a clinical site in Mysore, India in 2005 while completing her PhD dissertation. For over a decade, the Prerana Women’s Health Initiative has delivered low-cost, high-quality reproductive health services to 50,000 low-income women living in Mysore.  The Saving Children Improving Lives Program focused on increasing integrated antenatal care and HIV testing services for women in rural and tribal communities using mobile clinics with the help of women’s self-help groups to mobilize and follow-up women. This program model was then adapted to provide cervical cancer screening services in the community in India, which is the only community based cervical cancer screening program in India.

Her current research is examining the intersection of infectious and chronic diseases with a focus on cancer. Her work has resulted in more than 250 peer-reviewed publications. She continues to develop novel lines of research and has been supported by foundations, biotechnology companies, federal and international funding organizations. She is a recipient of multiple national and international awards including the prestigious International Leadership Award from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation for her work on HIV prevention. She is recipient of several teaching and mentoring awards including the Maria Valdez Mentoring Award at the University of Arizona and the Outstanding Mentorship Award from the American College of Epidemiology. Most recently, she was awarded the Gamechanger Award by NAACP and the Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Scholar Award. Dr. Madhivanan serves as an advisor to a number of state departments of Public Health, non-profit as well as governmental research organizations. Dr. Madhivanan has been a PI of multiple federal and foundation grants, as well as a mentor and investigator of numerous NIH, CDC, and industry-sponsored studies and clinical trials.

Research Areas:

• Intersection of Infectious Disease and Cancer
• Women's Health across Lifespan
• Global Health
• Social Determinants of Health
• Vaccine Preventable Diseases

Publications: 

Coursey K, Muralidhar K, Srinivas V, Jaykrishna P, Begum F, Ningaiah N, Lee SJ, Madhivanan P. Acceptability of HPV vaccination for cervical cancer prevention amongst emerging adult women in rural Mysore, India: a mixed-methods study. BMC Public Health. 2024 Aug 7;24(1):2139. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-19485-8. PMID: 39112938; PMCID: PMC11304586.

Lott BE, Yeo S, Bekele E, Birhanu F, Hussein R, Muktar S, Mengiste T, Asfaw E, Madhivanan P, Deressa BT. Breast Cancer Education and Empowerment in Ethiopia: Evaluating Community-Based Cancer Prevention Efforts Using the RE-AIM Framework. J Cancer Educ. 2024 Dec;39(6):698-705. doi: 10.1007/s13187-024-02453-6. Epub 2024 May 28. PMID: 38805159; PMCID: PMC11568955. 

Woodson LL, Garcia Saldivar A, Brown HE, Magrath PA, Antunez de Mayolo N, Pettygrove S, Farland LV, Madhivanan P, Blas MM. The downstream effects of COVID-19 on adolescent girls in the Peruvian Amazon: qualitative findings on how the pandemic affected education and reproductive health. BMJ Glob Health. 2024 Apr 30;9(4):e012391. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2023-012391. PMID: 38688564; PMCID: PMC11085768.