Shweta Narayan
Shweta Narayan spearheads campaigns focused on fossil fuels, air pollution, climate justice, and health equity. Her efforts aim to ignite a global conversation among leading health professional networks, academic institutions, think tanks, public health experts, and environment and climate movements to amplify advocacy on climate change and health. Based in India, Shweta brings over two decades of experience in advocacy and community organizing on environmental justice issues. She provides legal, media, and scientific research support to residents of pollution-impacted communities and workers exposed to toxic chemicals. Additionally, she collaborates with state and local governments in India to incorporate health professional input in developing climate and environmental health policies.
Dr Yogeshwar Kalkonde
Yogeshwar is a public health doctor, advocate and a neurologist. He is trained in internal medicine in India and in clinical research, immunology and neurology in the United States.
Seeking bigger challenges, he left his job in the US to work with tribal and rural communities that have limited access to care. He worked on the problem of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases among rural and Adivasi people and provided clinical care for 10 years in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. For the last 3 years he has been working in the rural and Adivasi area of Northern Chhattisgarh with a not-for-profit organization called Sangwari where he is an executive committee member.
He is a recipient of several medals, fellowships and teaching awards in India and in the United States including the Bruce Shoenberg International Award in Neuroepidemiology given by the American Academy of Neurology and the Wellcome Trust/DBT intermediate fellowship in public health. He serves as an expert member on several committees of the Indian Council of Medical Research, Tata Memorial Centre, NIMHANS etc. He is keen to address the issue of ‘health data poverty’ among rural and Adivasi communities. He has published more than 60 research papers in the leading international and national journals such as the Lancet, Lancet Neurology, Lancet Global Health and Stroke. These research studies highlight emerging health problems in rural and Adivasi people and the problem of non-communicable diseases in the low- and middle-income countries.
