Please join me in congratulating Dr. Radhika Sundararajan on her appointment as Co-Director of the new Office of International Medical Student Education, effective January 1, 2022.
The Office of International Medical Student Education was previously known as the Office of Global Health Education, and was led by Dr. Madelon Finkel, Professor of Population Health Sciences for 17 years. Dr. Finkel will be stepping down at the end of 2021.
Dr. Radhika Sundararajan is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Weill Cornell Center for Global Health. She received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, her medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, and completed residency training at Massachusetts General/Brigham & Women's Hospitals. She previously served as Director of the UC-San Diego School of Medicine Global Health Academic Concentration.
Dr. Sundararajan's work seeks to improve engagement with healthcare services in global, low-resource settings, with particular focus on improving HIV-related clinical outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research has shown that informal healthcare providers, such as traditional healers, have strong influence over their clients' health-seeking trajectories, and should be considered key stakeholders for HIV control programs in endemic regions. She has conducted mixed methods and implementation research on both infectious and non-communicable diseases in India, Mozambique, Uganda, and Tanzania.
