Dr Zinia Nujum
Dr Zinia Nujum
Dr. Zinia T. Nujum is a teacher, researcher, and consultant in public health, currently serving as Additional Professor in the Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Kollam, Kerala, and on deputation as faculty at the School of Public Health, Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS).
She teaches Community Medicine to undergraduate and postgraduate medical students, and Epidemiology to MSc Clinical Epidemiology and PhD students at KUHS. She is also an approved PhD guide at KUHS and serves as a doctoral committee member at the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, SCTIMST, Kerala. With over 20 years of experience mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate students, she has guided research across a wide spectrum of public health topics, with particular expertise in using qualitative research for program evaluation.
Dr. Zinia is a seasoned researcher in infectious diseases, with her early work focusing on Filariasis and later expanding to Dengue and Rabies, where her primary research contributions have been in epidemiology and health economics. She has also undertaken significant research in Tuberculosis and Rabies, with extensive experience in rabies prevention.
She has received several prestigious fellowships and awards, including the Short-Term International Fellowship for Senior Indian Biomedical Scientists (ICMR, Department of Health Research, 2023), and served as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
In addition to academics, Dr. Zinia is an active public health consultant. She is a National Assessor for Effective Vaccine Management (National Cold Chain & Vaccine Management Resource Centre, NIHFW) and a member of multiple state-level committees, including the Kerala State Planning Board Working Group on Medicine and Public Health (14th Five-Year Plan), the State Rapid Response Team, and the HIV State Sentinel Surveillance Team.
Currently, she is the Principal Investigator of the project “Implementation of Integrated Bite Case Management (IBCM) as part of a One Health program for Rabies at the
Primary Health Care level in Kerala: Cost-effectiveness, challenges and solutions”, supported by the WHO–TDR Impact Grants (2023–2024). She is also the PI of projects supported by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).
Her contributions have been widely recognized with numerous awards, including the President’s Award (2024) from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (RSTMH), the WHO/TDR Postgraduate Training Grant in Implementation Research (2014), the IMA Kerala State Special Appreciation Award for Dengue Research (2019), and the Dr. N.R. Roy Award from the Indian Public Health Association (2021).