Meenakshi Gautham

I am a Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care (DPHPC) at Cambridge, supporting the design and delivery of the MPhil in Population Health Sciences that is offered through a partnership between DPHPC, and the MRC Epidemiology and Biostatistics Departments. My emphasis within the MPhil is  on the Global Health, Public Health, and Primary Care themes and I teach in modules on Health Policy, Global Health Governance and Research Skills. 

I am also an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Health Systems Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in the Department of Global Health and Development, and Deputy Programme Director for the MSc in Global Health Policy (by distance learning). Previously, I worked as the India Country Coordinator of the IDEAS project and as Study Coordinator for the Equitable Research Partnerships project at LSHTM. 

My research has covered various dimensions of health systems and health policy issues related to maternal, childhood and newborn health and, since 2016, to  antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic use in community settings in low- and middle- income countries. This work has been funded by several UKRI grants (click here for more information).  I am particularly interested in exploring the design of antimicrobial stewardship in mixed health systems in LMICs where diverse actors – public and private, formal and informal-co-produce informalities of practices that cut across service delivery, supply chains, knowledge production and governance of these systems. My OASIS research team won the second prize in the MIT SOLVE/Trinity Challenge for AMR in community settings in 2024, towards designing an AI based solution for improving antibiotic stewardship in human and animal health in informal rural healthcare settings in India. I am passionate about decolonizing global health by challenging dominant frameworks and addressing epistemic barriers to health policy and health system reforms, and I’ve led policy changes related to mid-level health providers’ development in India. 

I’m an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and a member of the Cambridge Science and Policy network (CSaP). I have a PhD in Public Health and Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2006).

See my publications here.