Professor Jane Hirst
Professor Jane Hirst is Chair in Global Women’s Health at The George Institute for Global Health, UK, and the School of Public Health at Imperial College. She is also Visiting Professor in Global Women's Health at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Obstetrician, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
She is an active clinical researcher with projects focussed on global women’s health and investigating novel approaches to improve health care delivery. She has a particular interest in preventing cardiometabolic complications in women after high-risk pregnancy conditions such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia.
Professor Hirst is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Her Fellowship title is “Pregnancy as an opportunity to improve women’s lifelong health”. She is PI for the SMART Health Pregnancy trial in India. This trial is being conducted in two rural districts in two states, and is evaluating a community-based intervention and digital clinical decision support tool to improve screening, management and referral of high risk conditions during pregnancy and in the in first year after birth.
Alice Witt
Alice is a Research & Policy Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health, based in the UK office. Alice joined The George Institute in early 2023 to work on the MESSAGE (Medical Science Sex and Gender Equity) project, an initiative to develop a UK-based policy for integrating sex and gender considerations into biomedical research.
A social scientist by background, Alice’s research interests sit at the intersection between gender and health. Prior to joining TGI, she worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where her research focused on the influence of social norms on family planning programmes and prevention of gender-based violence. She is particularly interested in how institutional norms and policies can shape women’s health and healthcare, and is passionate about translating research in this area into real-world impact.
Alice holds an MA in Social Anthropology of Development from SOAS, University of London, and a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford.
Dr Faraidoon Haghdoost
Faraidoon is a medical doctor from Kurdistan, Iran, a research fellow in headache disorders at The George Institute for Global Health, and a conjoint lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is interested in studying headache disorders, especially migraine disease, contributing to growing awareness of the need for headache-specific research, and starting a headache-specific research group based on headache patients’ needs. He received his medical degree from the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Iran and his PhD from the University of New South Wales. Faraidoon is passionate about engaging with scientists, healthcare providers, and people with headache disorders through social media and other communication platforms.
Visit Faraidoon's website.
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Sarah Suwasrawala
Sarah Suwasrawala is a psychologist and public mental health researcher working at the intersection of women's health, mental health, and community-based care. She currently serves as a Research Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health in India, where she contributes to multidisciplinary research on women's health and well-being across diverse healthcare settings. She holds a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology and has extensive experience designing and implementing trauma-informed, rights-based psychosocial interventions with marginalised populations, particularly youth.
Her work is grounded in culturally responsive and equity-oriented approaches, with a focus on gender-based violence, mental health disparities, and strengthening accessible mental health services in low-resource contexts. She is particularly interested in integrating mental health within broader public health frameworks and advancing community-driven models of care that address the social determinants of health.
Preety R Rajbangshi
Preety R. Rajbangshi is a Senior Research Fellow at The George Institute for Global Health, India, where she leads India's Global Women's Health Programme. She holds a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, United States.
Her research focuses on women's health across the life course and strengthening health systems for primary care. With nearly two decades of experience as a researcher and practitioner, she has worked on maternal health, anaemia, and endometriosis. She has prior experience working with government health programmes at national and state levels in India.
Preety brings extensive field experience in community engagement with tribal communities, internally displaced populations, and women workers in tea plantations. Her work aims to address health inequities and generate practice-based evidence to inform action.