Our Team

Dr. Troy Cunningham, Thematic Lead of the MNCH theme at KHPT, works on a large-scale Maternal, Newborn and Child Health project funded by the Gates Foundation. The project provides technical support to the National Rural Health Mission in improving maternal, newborn, and child health outcomes in priority districts of northern Karnataka. He is also the technical lead for an innovative onsite mentoring intervention to improve facility-based intrapartum and postpartum care, which has been implemented across 385 primary health centers and first referral units across eight project focus districts.

Earlier, he worked as a quality improvement specialist where he significantly contributed to the development of quality improvement methods, tools, and training curricula in the areas of reproductive, maternal, and newborn health, HIV, and orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) programmes both at the facility and community levels. Several innovations of the project have been replicated in other states namely Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Andhra Pradesh. He particularly assisted the technical support unit of Uttar Pradesh in developing training manuals as part of training nurse mentors for scaling up onsite mentoring intervention in the facilities of Uttar Pradesh.

Dr. Troy is a medical doctor with advanced training in public health administration. He possesses over a decade of experience, both in programme management and technical roles ranging from HIV to broader sexual and reproductive health programmes.

Agnita is an experienced nutrition and public health specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the social development sector and nutrition research with 10 years of experience. She has her first Masters in food science and nutrition and recently completed a second Masters in global health and infectious diseases from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She also obtained a certificate of advanced studies in public governance and administration from ETH, Zurich. She participated in the 2018 Global health Academy, the University of Edinburgh with a focus on the One Health approach. She is also a certified diabetes educator by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

She is currently the Strategic Lead for the Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health thematic area and has been associated with KHPT for 6 years. She has worked closely with the Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSA) of multiple states in the country to promote and strengthen the fortification of staples through advocacy with Government departments and building the capacity of food business operators on fortification. Earlier she was involved in providing technical expertise for a nutrition pilot project focusing on alleviating nutrition in the most backward blocks of the state of Karnataka. She supports nutrition interventions in the organization in terms of planning and execution of both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions based on evidence.

Earlier she was a senior research fellow at St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore involved in advanced research in the maternal and child nutrition area using, or developing, the appropriate research methods. Her interests are in global health, food systems, governance, and administration. She looks forward to working towards strengthening the food systems aimed at alleviating the nutritional landscape in the country.

Dr Suresh Chitrapu, Deputy Director, Communications has worked at KHPT for over a decade. He has more than 15 years of work experience in the areas of community engagement at the grassroots and community mobilization of marginalised and socially excluded groups.

He specialises in planning, designing and implementation of behaviour change, outreach and communication tools and strategies for public health programs. He has the experience in developing and directing various audio-visual aids, using creative art forms such as intimate interactive theatre and folks art and music. He has working experience in deferent themes such as HIV AIDS, Tuberculosis, mother and child health, nutrition and non-communicable diseases facilitating capacity building programme with various focussed group such as female sex worker, sexual minorities, people living with HIV aids,, adolescents, panchayat members, front line health workers. He is the recipient of PhD fellowship from the International Infectious Disease and Global Health Training Program offered by the University of Manitoba, Canada.

Gururaj is a program specialist with over 15 years of experience in KHPT. He is specialised in starting up and sustaining new projects, quickly establishing systems for planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and mentoring teams. He currently manages staple food fortification projects covering 19 states of India and guides nutrition support initiatives.

He has experience in setting up innovative ICT solutions such as IVRS, telephone-based treatment support services and mobile-based patient support systems. He worked as Deputy Project Director of Tuberculosis Health Action and Learning Initiation (THALI) project, managing the responsibility of starting the project and establishing systems. As Team Leader of the SHOPS TB project and Project Manager of the MBPH TB project in Karnataka, he worked closely with the state TB program.

He was part of joint evaluation visits of the Karnataka state TB team and provided inputs into the state-level annual TB program planning. He coordinated and monitored training of private practitioners for STI, HIV and TB using networks of private and Government medical colleges, and has developed and managed innovative IT initiatives including bio-matrix tracking in clinical services for key populations, logistic management information systems for ART drugs, and TB care-line. Professionally, Gururaj has completed a 3-year course at NIIT, Masters in Business Administration and holds a degree in Economics from Mysore University.

Suraj is a native to Ranchi, Jharkhand. He has pursued a postgraduate diploma in Rural Management from Xavier Institute of Social Services in 2015-17 and was awarded CASA medal. Presently, He is working as a State Coordinator-Rajasthan on fortification project for Karnataka Health Promotion Trust, based out of Jaipur, Rajasthan.

He has four years of experience after an MBA, where he worked for an NGO and two social enterprises. He has a good knowledge of CSR project Implementation, specialising in Intrapreneurship livelihood. He has worked on a wide range of thematic areas like smart panchayat, health, livelihood related to Intrapreneurship development and clean energy projects.

He is passionate about business development; therefore, spends time to study small scale businesses and entrepreneurship development. He also holds two certifications on small business development training program from Facebook and NSDC.

Prathibha Rai, currently is a Manager-Community Interventions at KHPT, with more than 17 years of experience in the social development sector.

Her key areas of work at KHPT are in community mobilization, program development and program management in the areas of Maternal Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH) & Non-Communicable Disease. Her work focusses on strengthening community systems (Community health workers, community structures like VHSNC & ARS) through the development of training modules, job aids and capacity building. In the MNCH area, she majorly contributed to the development of ASHA diary and led the pilot of ASHA diary.

In her initial assignment, she managed and mentored a team of counsellors in the HIV/AIDS Care and support centre. At FICCI & PSI, she led the implementation of a workplace intervention program on HIV/AIDS & TB in the industries.

She holds Masters in Social Work and M.Phil in Sociology. She is a counsellor by passion. Currently, she is also a member of POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment in the workplace) committee at KHPT.

Shreeraj is currently working as Program Manager in KHPT’s food fortification project which aims to address micronutrient deficiencies in 21 states of India through staple food fortification.

He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Physiotherapy and a Master’s Degree in Public Health. He has 3 years of experience working closely with the community addressing various public health issues on the ground. He previously worked with Tata Trust as a district lead to provide technical support to the Department of Women and Child Development and to effectively roll out POSHAN Abhiyaan, a national level scheme in Indore district.

He also worked as Program Manager with Punarvas Organisation in Mumbai for Special Children, focused on bettering the lives of special kids by working with various CSR organisations and thus rolling out many facilities and opportunities for the children. He is passionate about sports physiotherapy and was a team member in on-field Sports Injury management for the 72nd All India Inter-university Athletics.

Jaya Tripathi, a Program Manager at KHPT, works on Large scale Edible Oil, Milk and Wheat Flour Fortification Project funded by Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). The project provides technical support to state government food safety departments in training and sensitizing industries to adopt fortification in order to address micronutrient malnutrition.

She had earlier worked with Babasaheb Bheema Rao Ambedkar Central University, Lucknow (UP) as lecture (Food Science and Nutrition) and with Asian Sustainable Holistic Approach (ASHA), Asia as Project Co-Ordinator on the maternal and child health project funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

She owns a PhD in Food Science and Nutrition and was involved in advance research in the field of food science. She had availed Senior Research Fellowship from University Grant Commission (MHRD) from 2014-2018 to pursue her doctorate. Her publications include 9 research papers, 2 books and 2 chapters in books.

Rashid is currently working as a Program Manager to promote and scale-up large scale food fortification in government safety net programs, FBOs and other stakeholders at a national level. He is responsible for establishing the linkages with key stakeholders (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, State governments and industry partners), project planning, strategizing, implementing, sensitising and capacitating the industry partners as well as government officials on fortification.

He is a project management professional with broad skills and 7 years of experience in implementing a diverse portfolio of projects in the development sector. He has worked with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship and Ministry of Minority Affairs as consultant and state coordinator respectively.
He completed his Masters in Personnel Management (Industrial Relations & Labour Laws), from the University of Pune in 2013. He was awarded the Food Fortification Champion Award presented by Food and Drug Control Administration, Govt. of Gujarat and GAIN in April 2019 and the Award for Excellence for Women Empowerment presented by Ministry of Minority Affairs in January 2017.

He is passionate about working at the community level to support positive change in the lives of the general population.