Areas of Interest:
He is the Co-Principal Investigator on the ‘Strengthening of Cessation Capacity of Primary Health Care Professionals for Tobacco Cessation’ funded by the Global Bridges Consortium.
Manu is a Dental Surgeon with a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from University College London and a Masters in Public Health with specialization in Advanced Epidemiology from the University of Glasgow (U.K.). He is currently working as Research Scientist and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). He is also the Technical Advisor to the President, PHFI. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholarship for the year 2010-11, a Wellcome Trust scholarship for his doctoral studies in the year 2009 and another Wellcome Trust Mid-Career Fellowship to undertake work on psychosocial determinants of oral health inequalities in India. He has many publications in leading international journals to his name and is the author on various book chapters.
His areas of expertise lies in advanced Epidemiologic Methods, Operations and Health Systems Research and Health Promotion. He has been involved in training mid-level officials from the various cadres of Indian health system on aspects such as tobacco cessation, disease outbreak investigation, surveillance, oral health promotion and project management. He has worked on many projects funded by Government of India, WHO, BMGF, USAID and NIH in the past. He is currently also steering a project which aims to provide technical assistance to the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda on health. He is also the Principal Investigator of a Wellcome Trust funded study which looks at the pathways through which various psychosocial and behavioural factors affect oral health of adolescents. He is one of the few people from India with a research agenda focusing on inequalities in oral health. He is a founder member of International Centre for Oral Health Inequalities Research and Policy based in UK, Global Oral Health Inequalities Research Network of the International Association of Dental Research and Indian Dental Association. Recently, he has been awarded a large trial support grant from Medical Research Council (MRC), UK on assessing the impact of banning Sugar and Sweetened Beverages in Schools in India.
