Shilpa Venkatachalam, PhD

About Shilpa

Shilpa Venkatachalam, PhD, MPH, is the Director, Patient-Centered Research Operations and Ethical Oversight and President of GHLF North Africa, as well as Co-Principal Investigator of CreakyJoints® “ArthritisPower,” the AR-Power Patient-Powered Research Network which is part of 20 Patient Powered Research Networks of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Net. She manages several research projects including a collaborative research group called the Autoimmune Research Collaborative (ARC) and the GHLF ArthritisPower research registry.

In addition, she More recently Shilpa led a PCORI Dissemination Engagement Award on Chronic Pain and a collaborative project on understanding the concerns, behaviors and experiences of people living with autoimmune and rheumatic conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic and a PCORI Stakeholder Convening Engagement Award titled, “Vaccine Uptake Research in Autoimmune Disease: Multistakeholder Planning”. Shilpa is a co-author on peer-reviewed papers and abstracts, and has been invited to present her findings at international medical conferences.

Shilpa completed her undergraduate degree in Mumbai, before moving to the U.K. to complete a Masters in Literature at the University of Durham. She earned her PhD in Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, U.K. She has worked as an academic in the U.K., the U.S and in the West Indies.

Following significant life events that required navigating health systems as patient and as caregiver, she earned an Advanced Master’s in Global Health from New York University, during which she also won the prestigious Paul Ambrose Scholars Program fellowship awarded by the by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research. She was among 25 chosen by The Young Persons Chronic Disease Network in collaboration with American Cancer Society and the Harvard Global Equity Center for The Global Cancer Advocacy Training.

In addition, she has been a regular panelist for video conference presentations on Global Health Topics by the Ambassador’s Club at the United Nations as part of a UNITAIR initiative. She has also served on the ‘Science and Policy Advisory Council”, for the National Pain Advocacy Center (NPAC). Dr Venkatachalam lives with inflammatory arthritis and also served as a patient representative and voting member in the development of the 2021 ACR guidelines for the treatment of RA and on the patient panel for the 2022 American College of Rheumatology Guideline for Vaccinations in Patients with Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases. She has international experience in healthcare and has worked in India and in Chad in both private and public sectors on chronic health disease related projects.