Dr Meenakshi Gautham

Dr. Gautham is a health policy and systems researcher whose research has a special focus on semi-regulated informal health markets in low and middle-income countries, specifically examining their role in primary care and antimicrobial resistance dynamics. Her research is anchored in the investigation of the policy, health systems, and market-related determinants contributing to suboptimal antibiotic practices within community settings, highlighting the intricate interplay between formal and informal healthcare stakeholders. She has spearheaded multidisciplinary research teams, notably the One Health Antibiotic Stewardship in Society (OASIS) group in India, that adopted a multi-stakeholder approach to collaboratively co-design comprehensive stewardship strategies, including a pioneering pharmaceutical code of conduct aimed at responsible antibiotic marketing and promotion in community settings. She also co-leads the multi-country Agri-AMU cluster, an international collaborative effort focused on developing and evaluating community-centred approaches to antibiotic stewardship, that are cognizant of antibiotic access issues in both human and veterinary health. She is head of the Economic, Social, and Political Sciences Pillar within the AMR Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).  She currently serves as the research coordinator for the Equitable Research Partnerships project (EquiPar), a multi-country, multi-institutional initiative led by a senior research team at LSHTM, dedicated to cultivating collaborative and inclusive research practices with a commitment to equity and representation.

Dr. Gautham’s previous research portfolio has covered a diverse array of domains within global health. These include the quality and coverage of maternal and new-born care in low resource settings, human resources and quality of primary healthcare, the private health sector and universal health coverage, community based micro-health insurance, understanding health innovations and their scale-up in maternal and new-born health, and overlaps between reproductive health and mental health.