Global health physician-epidemiologist

Protecting the medicines that protect us.

Antimicrobial resistance and emerging infections are unfolding in our hospitals, farms and neighbourhoods. I work across medicine, epidemiology and social science to understand how these threats evolve, and to turn that understanding into action.

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Positions

Lecturer, Public and Community Health Programs, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, University of OklahomaEditor-in-Chief, BMC Primary Care and BMC Health Services Research

Profiles

Nonprofit

STOP AMR, Founder and Executive Director

The research map22 projects placed from the individual to the planet, across three research streams. Select a project to explore its connections. Open the map

About

My questions come from three places: the bedside, the field site and the policy table.

Practice and field

I trained and practised as a clinician in Kolkata and New Delhi, in India, first in critical care and anaesthesiology, then in preventive and community medicine. Fieldwork has since taken me across India: antibiotic use among caregivers and smallholder dairy farmers in rural West Bengal^a, enteric fever and cholera surveillance, water and sanitation exposure in urban slums, and zoonotic risk where people, animals and cities meet.

Research and policy

As a scientist at ICMR-NICED in Kolkata I co-led a phase IV rotavirus vaccine trial^b whose evidence supported national scale-up. During COVID-19 I ran the secretariat of India’s National Task Force^c at ICMR, contributing rapid evidence synthesis, the PLACID trial and the first national serosurvey. Earlier, I drafted background evidence for India’s National Action Plan on AMR and built evaluation instruments now used across WHO SEARO.

2025: PhD, International Health, Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health^d
2019: DTM&H, Royal College of Physicians, London
2015: MD, Community Medicine, University College of Medical Sciences, New Delhi
2010: MBBS, Medical College and Hospitals, Kolkata

Research

Research, from measuring a problem to scaling a solution

My projects fall into three streams. Most of the work starts with measurement in the field, and the best of it ends in policy.

01 Define the ProblemThis stream asks how much disease there is, who carries it and why. It combines surveillance, field epidemiology and evidence synthesis to measure the burden of infection and the conditions that sustain it, from unsafe water and sanitation to the ways antibiotics are obtained and used. Much of it follows risk across people, animals and the environment.Explore this stream

02 Develop & Test SolutionsThis stream tests whether interventions work in the settings where they will be used. Randomised trials and observational studies estimate the safety, effectiveness and feasibility of vaccines and treatments, while attention to delivery and acceptance helps explain why an intervention succeeds or fails.Explore this stream

03 M&E + Scale UpThis stream follows evidence into programmes and policy. It covers the evaluation of interventions after they are introduced, frameworks for assessing how health systems contain antimicrobial resistance, and the technical and institutional work that turns recommendations into practice at national, regional and global levels.Explore this stream

A hand-painted Bengali sign for a medicine shop that sells medicines for people, animals and birds — A medicine-shop sign in Purulia: medicines for people, animals and birds

Seated in a village medicine shop in Purulia, seen from behind, facing shelves of medicines — In a village medicine shop, Purulia

A community interview during fieldwork in rural Purulia — A community interview, Purulia

A village lane between tiled-roof houses and woven fencing — A lane between village homes, October 2024

Selected work

2020–2025

Doctoral research Antimicrobial use and interventions in rural India A mixed-methods dissertation in three strands: how caregivers seek care and use antibiotics for children; how smallholder farmers access and decide on antibiotics for livestock; and how far rotavirus vaccination reduces antibiotic-treated diarrhoea^e. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Mixed-methods fieldwork in Purulia, West Bengal.

2018–2021

Phase IV trial RVICS, the rotavirus vaccine interchangeability trial A multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled non-inferiority trial testing whether Rotavac and Rotasiil could be given in an interchangeable schedule. The evidence supported national scale-up of India’s rotavirus programme and was published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Co-investigator, ICMR-NICED, Kolkata. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India.

2020

PLACID: convalescent plasma in COVID-19An open-label, multicentre phase II randomised controlled trial in 464 adults hospitalised with moderate COVID-19 at 39 public and private hospitals in India, comparing convalescent plasma plus standard care with standard care alone. As co-investigator, I helped develop the protocol and analysis plan, supported the data-management and analysis teams, and contributed to interpretation and writing. Convalescent plasma was not associated with a reduction in progression to severe disease or all-cause mortality at 28 days, and the findings informed national treatment guidance.

2017–2020

National Surveillance System for Enteric FeverA multicentre active fever surveillance system that measured the burden of typhoid and paratyphoid fever in children younger than 15 years at urban and rural sites in India, with laboratory confirmation of cases. As co-investigator at the ICMR-NICED site in Kolkata, I led field activities and site staff, supervised data quality, and conducted interim and spatial analyses. The cohorts documented a substantial burden of culture-confirmed typhoid fever in urban children, giving site-specific estimates to vaccine and water and sanitation policy discussions.

2015–2017

AMR situation-analysis tools for WHOTwo linked assessments of antimicrobial resistance for WHO. For the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, I helped develop and revise a situation-analysis framework with indicators for surveillance, stewardship, infection prevention and control, awareness, research and One Health coordination; it was piloted in Indonesia. For the WHO Country Office for India, I synthesised evidence on resistance, antibiotic consumption, surveillance and policy responses for the background paper that informed an interministerial review and India’s first National Action Plan on AMR.

2015–2017

Peri-urban human–animal–environment interfaceA five-city One Health initiative, led by the Public Health Foundation of India and the International Livestock Research Institute, on how urban growth, livestock production, markets and health services shape infectious-disease and antimicrobial-resistance risks. I coordinated study development and implementation across partner teams, managed research staff, and contributed to quantitative and qualitative analyses. Our qualitative study on smallholder dairy farms found that antibiotic use reflected farm practices, veterinary services, market pressures and regulation together, which points beyond interventions aimed only at individual knowledge.

Dissertation assistant

Ask my dissertation a question

An assistant restricted to two sources: my dissertation and its analytic memos. It reproduces quantitative results exactly, cites the section, and does not speculate or browse the web.

Open the assistant

STOP AMR

Protecting antibiotics is not only a scientific goal. It is a moral one.

STOP AMR is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit I founded in 2024. It works with communities to reduce the harm of antimicrobial resistance through education, advocacy and locally owned action.

Vision: A world where communities thrive free from the threat of antimicrobial resistance.
Mission: To work with communities in India and worldwide to reduce the impact of antimicrobial resistance through education, advocacy and practical solutions that promote responsible antimicrobial use and better access to appropriate treatment.

Visit stopamr.org

Selected publications

Teaching and policy

Evidence is only useful once it is taught and used.

Teaching Courses and modulesUndergraduate epidemiology, biostatistics, global health and public health at the University of Oklahoma, and an undergraduate course at Johns Hopkins University as a Gordis Teaching Fellow. Graduate teaching at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as a teaching assistant in ten courses with more than 500 students. Invited lectures and modules for Médecins Sans Frontières, ICMR institutes, George Mason University and other programmes. Examiner and paper-setter for the DTM&H.

Policy Briefs and instrumentsI have prepared the evidence behind national and regional decisions: background analysis for India’s first National Action Plan on AMR, a WHO framework for assessing how South-East Asian countries contain AMR, and evidence on oral cholera vaccination presented to India’s immunization advisory group. During COVID-19 I managed the secretariat of India’s National Task Force, preparing technical documents and evidence syntheses for its deliberations.

Contact

Always glad to talk about One Health, AMR and emerging infections.

pranab.chatterjee@stopamr.org