Southeast Asia Region

The SEAR Regional Hub is working on the theme ‘Determinants of Health’ as part of its current Regional Flagship Initiative

WHO’s seventh annual report on Monitoring progress towards Universal Health Coverage and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in the South-East Asia Region recognizes the great strides made by the region towards improving the service coverage index from 47 in 2010 to 61 in 2019, while highlighting that we have ways to go to achieve the minimum essential service coverage index score of 80 by 2030. To effectively address essential service coverage and achieve universal health coverage, we need to meaningfully address the various social, political, personal, and commercial determinants of health. Numerous factors affect the health of an individual – including but not limited to race, caste, the state of the environment, genetics, income, education level, and their sense of social connectedness and belonging. The context of people’s lives determine their health, and so solely blaming individuals for having poor health or crediting them for good health provides an incomplete picture of their health and well-being. Individuals are often unable to directly control many of these determinants of health. The IWG SEAR Regional Hub’s mission is to highlight and promote social, physical, and economic environments and approaches that enable countries in attaining universal reach of healthcare. To get more involved with the SEAR Regional Flagship Initiative, please contact iwghealthsystems@gmail.com.

IWG SEAR Regional Leadership

Sudipta Ghoshal | SEAR Board Member

Dr Sudipta Ghoshal is a trained and highly motivated public health professional with over 6 years of experience in clinical and non clinical health sector in India. She has completed her bachelor’s degree in Dental Surgery and pursued her Master’s Degree in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg of Public Health, in collaboration with Indian Institute of Health Management Research, Jaipur. She has worked within the GoWB health sector as a clinician. She is currently working as a Senior Specialist for Uttar Pradesh Technical Support Unit led by India Health Action Trust in the domain of RMNCHN. She works closely with NHM and GoUP health officials and provides technical support in rolling out government programs and initiatives such as LaQshya, SUMAN, PMSMA activities. She is also one of the board members from IWG SEAR.

Rachit Negi | SEAR Board Member

Dr. Rachit Negi is a trained public health professional from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA. Although his bachelor is in dentistry, he always has an aspiration to study and work in the public health arena. He did clinical practice before inflowing the world of public health and explore his interests in research, health promotion, advocacy. He strongly believes there is a huge gap in addressing public health issues in India and he wants to syndicate his interest and skillsets to create a difference in the public health ecosystem. With experience in TB from last couple of years with CHRI-PATH India Affiliate as State Lead for Uttarakhand , he has also worked in TBPPM space and identified the need of this collaboration to scale up the work towards TB elimination by 2025. Dr Rachit also has experience working with international donors (The World Bank, USAID, GAVI, GFATM, CRS), he has identified his key strengths in research, stakeholder engagement , communication design, program management, and networking.

Manik Inder Singh Sethi | SEAR Regional Director

Manik Inder Singh Sethi is a Senior Registrar in the Department of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences, Bangalore (Institute of National Importance) & Consultant Psychiatrist & Psychotherapist, with a research interest In Technological Advancements In Mental Health, Sexual Health, Mood Disorders & Mental Health Of Young Adults. Manik also serves as the Regional Director (SEAR) of the International Working Group for Health Systems Strengthening (IWG), along with the co-chair of Research WG of European Federation of Psychiatry Trainees. Manik is an LGBTQ+ Ally & An Avid Mental Health Advocate with an aim to create sustainable Mental Health Services.

Anushka Nair | SEAR Regional Director

Sagun Paudel | SEAR Regional Leader

Sagun Paudel is a highly passionate, motivated, and resourceful MPH graduate, with seven years of professional experience in the field of health in Nepal. He is committed to providing a significant technical contribution to improve people’s health in Nepal. Collecting best practices, generating evidence from media and mobilize social media to disseminate health information is a regular activity of his. Sagun has been working to inform, advocate, promote and motivate Nepalese health professionals by using mobile applications, social media, and websites since 2011.

Parth Sharma | SEAR Regional Leader

Parth Sharma is a physician, researcher, and writer. He graduated from Christian Medical College, Vellore in 2020 and is currently doing his MD in Preventive and Social Medicine in Delhi, India. Having witnessed a lot of suffering during his clinical practice in the Departments of Medical Oncology and Emergency Medicine, he wants to work to improve not just people’s quality of life but also their quality of death. He is interested in palliative care, preventive oncology, and digital health and wants to improve the accessibility and affordability of cancer care in India. He likes writing and educating people about various public health issues. His articles have been featured in Harvard Public Health Magazine, Think Global Health, Hindustan Times, and The Wire Science. He is also the founder of Nivarana (www.nivarana.org), a public health platform that educates people, and brings together public health enthusiasts to explore evidence-backed solutions to health and social problems. A researcher by passion, he loves working with numbers. As a Commission Fellow in the Lancet’s Citizen’s Commission, he is working on evidence synthesis on improving human resources for health in India.

Upendra Singh | SEAR Regional Leader

Dr. Upendra Singh is a Public Health Professional and he has done UGC-NET & Ph.D. in Health Administration and possesses his Masters in Public Health and M.Sc. (Community Health) from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Bangalore, India. He possess range of qualifications and did his Masters in Public Policy, PG Diploma in Rural Development (Rural Health Care), Cert. in Health Research Fundamentals (IIT, Madras), PG Diploma in Hospital Management and have attained Certificate Course in Information Technology, also did a Certificate Course in Project Management from IIT, Roorkee. He did courses in Ethics and Integrity at the United Nations (EIUN) UNSSC, Italy and Health Financing Policy- Universal Health Coverage (HFP-UHC), WHO, Geneva.

Siddharth Chowdhury| SEAR Regional Leader

Dr Siddharth Chowdhury is a Health Specialist at World Health Partners working towards towards bringing mental health care into the health programmes of the government while also providing door to door mental health screening services with severity based telephonic counselling or institutional referrals. He has been practicing in Clinical Psychiatry for 6 years, partaking in academic training in the last 3 years. Siddharth’s biggest strength lies in ensuring that the client and caregivers concerns are heard before a therapeutic plan is put in place. Siddharth is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at Umeed Wellness Center, and a Mental Health Columnist and Editor, Health at Rising Kashmir.

Andrian Liem | SEAR Regional Leader

Andrian Liem earned his PhD in clinical and health psychology from the School of Psychology, the University of Queensland, Australia (2015-2019). Andrian’s research interests are including clinical and health psychology, indigenous and cultural psychology, community psychology, migrants and refugees, global mental health, gender and sexuality, drug abuse, HIV-AIDS, and interfaith dialogue. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Macau, now Andrian is continuing his research fellowship journey at Monash University Malaysia for learning about neurodegenerative diseases and keep collaborating with migrant workers to improve their mental health. Preferred pronouns: he/they.

Aakrushi Ashishkumar Brahmbhatt | SEAR Regional Leader

Aakrushi is a post-graduate in public health from Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar (IIPH-G), and is also trained in clinical medicine. She is serving as a researcher to Sangath, India, a 26 year not-for-profit research organisation, working on mental health in India. Her interests are mental health, non-communicable diseases, implementation science research, maternal and child health and social determinants of health.