Team
K R Thankappan
K R Thankappan is Professor and head of the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies that hosted India’s first Master of Public Health (MPH) program. After his medical graduation, he has been trained as a public health physician and took his MD in social and preventive medicine from Trivandrum medical college in 1986 and an MPH in international health from the Harvard School of Public Health, USA in 1997. He teaches MPH students and guides PhD students in chronic disease epidemiology. His research interests are chronic non-communicable diseases and their risk factors particularly tobacco. He is the principle investigator in Kerala.
S.Sivasankaran
Dr S.Sivasankaran is a Co-PI for CIH in Kerala, India. He is also currently an Additional Professor of Cardiology at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences Trivandrum. In 1984, he graduated as the best outgoing student of Medical College Trivandrum with First Rank and distinction in nine subjects. Subsequently he did his MD and DM at the same institute and joined Sree Chitra Tirunal Medical centre as a faculty member in 1994. Since then, he has gone on a Commonwealth scholarship programme for advanced training in pediatric cardiology at the Guy’s Hospital, London and attended the International teaching seminar on preventive cardiology conducted by the World Heart Federation. He has published 30 papers in Indexed journals and has received 30 awards and medals for his academic excellence. Dr Sivasankaran initiated the cardiothoracic centre in one of the rural districts, Malappuram, in the state of Kerala in 2005, which completed 120 successful open heart surgeries in the first six months. He has a strong interest in Preventive and Pediatric cardiology. He has conducted 250 lectures on diet and lifestyle to school children, residents associations, doctors, and to international scientific deliberations.
Ravi Prasad Varma
Dr Ravi Prasad Varma is the Project Co-ordinator of CIH in Kerala. He graduated from Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore and completed his M.D. in Community Medicine from Calicut Medical College, Kozhikode. Ravi has worked as a WHO consultant to the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) of Government of India and has also worked as the Associate Project Coordinator of a School based Ear Care and Rehabilitation project in Central Kerala. CIH is Ravi’s first experience in working with noncommunicable diseases, and he expects to gain some useful experiences through facing the challenges of implementing interventions in a community where environmental modification for altering health behaviour is a novel idea.
Rajeev N. S - MBBS, Master of Community Health, PhD scholar
Rajeev first became interested in the prevention of non-communicable diseases after noticing the number of people affected in Kerala. He joined the CIH team in April 2008 after working for more than five years in primary care services, program management, academics and research in public health. Currently, Rajeev looks after the workplace section for the CIH Kerala team. He is also exploring the “Health system preparedness to meet the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases in Kerala state” as his PhD research. Other areas that Rajeev is interested in include health systems management, young peoples health and rights, agriculture and nutrition and HIV/AIDS.
