Editorial Team
Founding editor-in-chief:
Dr Lavanya Vijayasingham
HealwithZeal Global CIC, London, United Kingdom
Advisory Editorial Board
Mr Chikhu Ngombe, Malawi: I am a person with lived experience, I fought cancer (Leukemia) at the age of 8 years, diagnosed with epilepsy during the first 3 months of chemotherapy as a side effect to one of the chemotherapy drugs. I have been cancer-free since 1995 and have been living with epilepsy since 1992. In 2011, I founded Cancer Survivors Quest and am the current Executive Director. Cancer Survivors Quest is also one of the founding organisations of NCD Alliance Malawi, and we played a pivotal role in the establishment of the NCD Alliance in Malawi. I advocate for cancer in Malawi and offer some support to cancer patients in need of transport and nutrition support.
Dr Meena Isaac, India: I serve as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Community Medicine, Pushpagiri Institute of Medical Sciences, Thiruvalla, Kerala. I have been a Community Medicine practitioner for thirteen years and my journey includes a lived experience with caring for parents with NCDs and having had cancer myself. Through it all, my greatest teacher and eye opener has been my lived experience. I understood firsthand how silent we are as ‘patients’ and how medical paternalism plays a role in this silence. Health systems and our society cannot make meaningful progress unless people who use the health system express themselves. Health equity cannot just be seen through a numerical lens, it needs a social lens that will require us to correct the power imbalances in healthcare. I also serve as a Commissioner, on the Lancet Global Health Commission on People Centered Care for Universal Health Coverage and an Affiliate Faculty at the Center for Primary Care at Harvard Medical School, MA, USA.
Ms Oria James, Canada: In my role as a consultant with the WHO Global Diabetes Compact, I lead activities related to advocacy, communications, and the meaningful engagement of people with lived experience. Having been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in childhood, I developed a deep commitment to advancing equity in diabetes care and across the broader noncommunicable disease (NCD) landscape. Within the global diabetes space, I recognize my dual positionality: On one hand, I am intimately familiar with the daily physical and emotional realities of living with type 1 diabetes. On the other, I have only ever managed my condition in settings characterized by stability, safety, and access. I acknowledge these privileges and approach my work with humility and an awareness that many others living with NCDs face very different realities. My role is not to speak for others, but to help create space for a broader range of voices to be heard and meaningfully acted upon. My perspective in global health is shaped by both lived experience and a professional background in public health research and communications. Prior to joining WHO, I held roles with the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health and the WHO Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.
Dr Putri Widi Saraswati, Indonesia & Netherlands: I am an Indonesian decolonial feminist knowledge worker and facilitator primarily working in the health sector, especially within global health and Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). I identify as a genderqueer person and my pronouns are they/them/she. My professional training is in medicine and public health, and I have been working as a clinician, researcher, evaluator, healthcare planner and manager, and community activist. I am also a lived experience expert on mental health suffering and suicidality, navigation-related disabilities, reproductive justice, migration, and queer identities. I am one of the co-founders of RAISE Global Health, an intersectional feminist consultancy collective working in global health justice, and a Senior Fellow with Atlantic Fellows on Health Equity in Southeast Asia.
Professor Sundari Ravindran, India: I have been a researcher, activist, trainer and editor at the local, national and international levels for nearly four decades. My specific area of work has been sexual and reproductive health and rights, and its social and structural determinants. As the founder-member of a grassroots rural Dalit women’s organisation, and of a national advocacy coalition and an international journal, my passion has been to advocate for and to practice foregrounding experiential and practice-based knowledge in setting agendas for research, shaping programmes and policies.
