Purnima Madhivanan, MBBS, MPH, PhD

Cancer Prevention and Control Program

Biography

Purnima Madhivanan is an Associate Professor with Tenure in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. She holds joint appointments in the College of Medicine, Bio5 Institute and is a member of the UA Cancer Center. She completed her medical training in India and received a MPH/PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California Berkeley. She completed her postdoctoral training at San Francisco Department of Public Health on Clinical Trials Management. She is currently the Director of the NIH funded Global Health Training Program at UA and serves as a co-PI for the GHES consortium in collaboration with Stanford, Yale and University of California, Berkeley.

Cancer Focus

For the last 20 years, Dr Madhivanan’s research has focused on disadvantaged populations, elucidating the dynamics of poverty, gender and the social & environmental determinants of health, in particular the impact on women and children living in rural communities. Her current research focusses on the intersection of infectious diseases and cancer using -omics technology. Her current work is examining the vaginal and gut microbiome and their role in women's reproductive health and cancer. She serves on the planning committee for the NIH/DMID funded STI-Clinical Trials Network. Dr Madhivanan has conducted several large mixed methods epidemiological studies in the US and internationally.