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Devi Lalita Sridhar FRSE (born 1984) is an American public health researcher, who is both professor and chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her research considers the effectiveness of public health interventions and how to improve developmental assistance for health. Sridhar directs the University of Edinburgh's Global Health Governance Programme which she established in 2014. Sridhar has written two books, The Battle Against Hunger: Choice, Circumstance and the World Bank Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?, (co-written with Chelsea Clinton) and Preventable: How a Pandemic Changed the World & How to Stop the Next One. Following the West African Ebola virus epidemic, she worked with the Harvard Global Health Institute and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine to assess international responses to the outbreak and use it to better inform preparations with future pandemics. In 2020, Sridhar was part of the Royal Society's Data Evaluation and Learning for Viral Epidemics (DELVE) group which influences the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee of the government of the United Kingdom. She also serves as a member of the Scottish Government's COVID-19 advisory group set up to provide advice on how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland. Early life and education Sridhar was born and raised in Miami, Florida in an Indian family. Her father was Kasi Sridhar. After graduating from Ransom Everglades School at the age of 16, she enrolled in a six-year programme at the University of Miami that awards a bachelor's degree in two years, after which students are in the school of medicine. In an interview with The Lancet, Sridhar explained that her passion for public health stems from her adolescence in Florida, where Sridhar's father died from cancer after years of illness, "Even as a teenager I could see that health was the definition of true wealth". Having received her bachelor's degree in biology at the age of 18, Sridhar became the youngest person in the U.S. to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. At Oxford, Sridhar completed an MPhil in medical anthropology in 2005, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in anthropology in 2006. Her thesis analysed the effectiveness of the World Bank's effort to combat malnutrition in India. During her doctorate, she spent eight months conducting fieldwork in India into malnutrition and infectious diseases, which would inform her first book. Sridhar turned down a funded position at Harvard Law School to join the University of Oxford Global Economic Governance Programme in 2006, where she was awarded both MPhil and DPhil degrees. She was inspired by her grandmother, who raised her children in the 1960s before completing her DPhil and writing several books. Career and research From 2008, Sridhar was a postdoctoral fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. Her doctoral research led to her first book in 2008, The Battle Against Hunger, chosen by Foreign Affairs as a must-read book in aid policy. The book investigated the World Bank funded nutrition programme based in India, which became a blueprint for aid programmes despite lack of evidence for its effectiveness. Sridhar was concerned the programme did not address the social conditions that cause undernutrition in India. Sridhar is an Associate Fellow with the Chatham House Centre on Global Health. In 2011, she was appointed to Wolfson College, Oxford as an associate professor in global health politics. Sridhar serves on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Health Industry. She started to research the rise of public–private partnerships in global health governance, and how, whilst they are crucial to combat infectious disease, their non-transparent accountability and effectiveness should be investigated. International organisations are redirected by specific incentives, and the asymmetry of information sharing between member states and groups like the World Health Organization (WHO) or World Bank limits their impact. She worked with Chelsea Clinton and used principal agent theory to study the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the GAVI alliance. She worked with Julio Frenk on the need for an independent and impartial World Health Organization. Between 2014 and 2016, Sridhar was on the board of trustees of Save the Children. She regularly contributes to The Guardian, BBC World Service, CNN, Channel 4 News, and BBC Radio 4. She is a member of Iyiola Solanke's Black Professors Forum. Ebola and assessing responses to pandemics Sridhar and colleagues investigated the international response to the West African Ebola virus epidemic, and what reforms were needed to heal a global system for outbreak response. She partnered with the Harvard Global Health Institute and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine to independently analyse the global response. They raised questions for the next director general of the WHO and recommended ten essential reforms to prevent and respond to the next pandemic. In 2014, Sridhar was appointed reader and senior lecturer in Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh. The following year she was promoted to full professor. While at Edinburgh, Sridhar established the Global Health Governance Programme and is the Founding Director. She works between the University of Edinburgh Medical School and Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government. Sridhar compiled the first Wellcome Trust open research collection on the topic of global public health. She is concerned by the rise of chronic disease, drug-resistant infection and funding for primary healthcare. While at the Blavatnik School of Government, Sridhar analysed the reach, effectiveness, and interdependency of supranational agencies like WHO, other UN health agencies, and organisations such as Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance and the World Bank. "The aim was to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of these organisations, and their comparative advantages and relevance to health ministries, especially in low-income and middle-income countries", she explained, in an interview with The Lancet. This work informed her 2017 book, co-authored with Chelsea Clinton, Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why? In the book, Sridhar and Clinton argue that health governance is global and that global institutions are necessary to protect citizens and improve health outcomes on a broad scale. In addition, global health governance is changing, with increasing recognition of the need for intergovernmental cooperation to combat health problems. The book examined the work of four key organisations, the WHO; the World Bank; The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; and GAVI. A key point made is the recent phenomenon of public-private partnerships in global health, a discussion of how these came about and some of the effects of such .... Discover the Devi Sridhar popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Devi Sridhar books.