Vijayashree Yellappa

She is a medical doctor, with specialisation in Public Health from National University of Singapore. She has fellowship in HIV Medicine from Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi. She is a recipient of Director General Development Corperation scholaraship, Belgium Government to pursue PhD from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium, in Public Private Partnership in Tuberculosis care and control in India.

Currently she is working as Faculty at the Institute of Public Health. She is involved in conducting Research, Teaching, Training, Advocacy and Proposal writing. Her general interests include Infectious diseases epidemiology, involving private health sector players in realising public health goals, Diagnostic research methodology and health System research. She also heads the communicable disease cluster.

She started her career as a Medical Officer in the Department of Health and Family Welfare, Karnataka state. She served as Medical Officer in a Primary Health Center, where she supervised the implementation of National Health Programmes. Following this, she served as Deputy chief medial officer in a District Hospital, Davanagere. Recognising her services, she was awarded as ‘Best Medical Officer’ in 2005 by the Member of Parliament, Davanagere district. Later she worked with World Health Organisation (WHO) as National Medical Consultant (2006-2009). She was deployed in the state of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. In this tenure she assisted the governments in implementing the National TB control programme.

From 2010, she has embarked on research career and has involved in multi-country research projects. She has worked with European commission to understand Health System and Regulation in India, Vietnam and China. Following this, she worked with a multi-country research team in to investigate the barriers of using Point of Care Tests in India, in association with McGill University, Canada and Maastricht University, Netherlands. She has provided consultancies including the World Bank in evaluating the financial incentives for private health sector incentives in TB care.

Currently, she is the principal investigator of a research project funded by WHO-TDR, for Research on Diseases of Poverty, to optimise the involvement of private health sector in the National TB programme of India. She is heading the Health System domain of SPEAK India Research Consortium which aims to to develop knowledge required to eliminate Leishmaniasis in India.

She is nominated by the Honorable Governor of Karnataka state as Senate Member of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Bangalore. She is also a member of the Advanced Research committee of RGUHS.