Shilpa Vimalananda

Age: 31

Home Town: Baltimore, MD

Education: BS in Biology and Community Health, Tufts University, MPH in Epidemiology and Bio-statistics, Tufts University School of Medicine

Specific Field Interests: Nutrition, Maternal and Child Health, Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Placement: Society for Education, Action, and Research in Community (SEARCH), Maharashtra

Area of Focus:

Highlights: While completing her Master' s degree in Public Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Shilpa honed her interest in Nutrition and Health Promotion. She worked with the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts Bay, providing healthful food and counseling people living with AIDS/HIV about how to achieve optimal nutrition while living with their disease. Shilpa conducted a study examining barriers to achieving that goal within the population served. Her commitment to Public Health work and a new focus on these same issues in the maternal and child population was cemented during subsequent projects, where she visited elementary schools in Chennai, India with a pediatrician to learn about the status of rural child healthcare. There she completed an informal study examining the nutrition status and school performance of girl versus the boy children in rural Chennai. She later returned to India, where she continued to focus on child health and nutrition by teaching English to preschool children as well as running health education sessions with local women in Dharamsala.