Ishu Kataria is a Senior Public Health Researcher with RTI’s Center for Global Noncommunicable Diseases. Dr. Kataria has a Masters and PhD in Public Health and Nutrition from University of Delhi, India, and works on noncommunicable disease (NCD) prevention and control both in India as well as globally. She has experience in conceptualizing and developing training interventions, and designing and implementing programs on cancer prevention, adolescent NCDs, maternal and child health, and behavior change communication.
Dr. Kataria has served as a Special Advisor to the World Health Organization for NCDs and is the NCD focal point for the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth. She is also the Global Coordinator for the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YP-CDN)—a global nonprofit that works to mobilize young leaders worldwide to take action against social injustice driven by NCDs. At YP-CDN, she works with young local community leaders at the grassroots level for doing advocacy campaigns on NCDs and access to medicines. She also co-chairs the recently established Youth Coalition on NCDs.
Dr. Kataria developed experience in capacity building by working with the Aga Khan Foundation to conceptualize and develop training modules on growth monitoring and promotion for community health workers as well as on nutrition and hygiene for women’s self-help groups. For the World Obesity Federation, she documented policy and evidence in India to provide an evidence-based model for effective integrated intervention approaches in preventing and reducing the prevalence of obesity and related co-morbidities. She has also worked with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for their community outreach program using the positive deviance approach, and the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, on their Integrated Child Development Services initiative.