Dr Ishu Kataria

 

 

 

Dr. Ishu Kataria is a Senior Public Health Researcher with RTI International, where she is a part of RTI’s Center for Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs). She serves as the NCD focal point for the UN Major Group for Children and Youth, co-chair of Youth Coalition on NCDs, and is the steering group member for the recently launched NCD Labs initiative for the WHO on NCDs and the next generation. She works on NCD prevention and control both in India as well as globally. Dr. Kataria has experience in conceptualizing and developing training interventions, and designing and implementing programs on maternal and child health, adolescent NCDs, cancer prevention and control, and behavior change communication. Her recent work is focused on understating the prevalence of weight stigma among adolescents, estimating the cost of inaction for adolescent mental health, and measuring the economic and social costs of obesity. She has also co-led a mixed methods study for NIH to describe the prevalence and correlates of cancer-related perceived stigma and investigate cancer-and diabetes-related knowledge and psychosocial barriers to diagnosis and treatment, including fear, stigma, anxiety, and depression among cancer and diabetes patients and caregivers in India. Her current work includes understanding the state readiness for the introduction of HPV vaccination in the National Immunization Programme of India. Previously, Dr. Kataria has worked with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on their community outreach program using the positive deviance approach, and with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, on their Integrated Child Development Services strategy. She has also published various scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and presented her
research nationally and internationally.