Evidence, learning, leadership, and dialogue in global health.

Peer-reviewed publications, implementation research, policy contributions, editorials, and evidence synthesis focused on strengthening health systems, advancing gender equity, improving HIV and SRHR outcomes, and translating evidence into practice.

Women's health inequities are among the most extensively documented challenges in global public health. Frameworks developed over decades — including the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, intersectionality theory, and ecological systems models — have each made important contributions to how we understand the structural drivers of gendered health disparities. The field owes much to this body of work.

And yet a consistent implementation gap persists. Diagnostic frameworks that correctly identify structural determinants do not always translate into operational guidance that programme managers and policymakers can act on — in sequence, across sectors, within the resource and political constraints of real health systems.

The Integrated Gender-Transformative Health Equity Model (IGHEM) was conceived and developed by Dr Vandana Dabla to address that gap — not to replace existing frameworks, but to integrate them. Drawing on seven established theoretical traditions across social determinants, intersectionality, ecological systems, and political economy, IGHEM provides an implementation-oriented architecture applicable across health and non-health sectors.

IGHEM was presented at the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP 2025), Bogotá, Colombia; selected from over 5,000 submissions across 125 countries. The framework is currently under peer review for publication. Further details will be shared upon publication.

Academic enquiries and collaboration interests are welcome.

Dr. Vandana Dabla, PhD

Global Health Leader · Policy Architect · Researcher · Adviser

I have spent two decades inside the systems I now write and think about — as a government programme authority accountable for work output with a team of 250+ staff and Delhi's HIV response, as having led Gender and HIV at UN Women for UNAIDS Joint Program, as a researcher across 14+ studies including a Phase III RCT, and as an adviser to USAID, US-CDC, and Government of India programmes serving millions of people across South Asia.

I am not an observer of global health. I have sat in the rooms where decisions are made, drafted the guidelines that shaped national policy, led the teams that delivered the programmes, and published the evidence that challenged what we thought we knew!

What I bring to Barbet is that accumulated knowledge, turned outward! The frameworks, the challenges, the things that actually work, and the questions I think the field is still not asking loudly enough.

Senior roles spanning the Government of India, UN Women, UNAIDS Joint program, USAID and US-CDC supported programs. Academic Editor, PLOS ONE. Editorial board and/or peer review roles across BMJ Open, Springer Nature, Frontiers, and Baishideng Publishing Group journals. 26+ peer-reviewed publications, editorials, opinion articles. Book chapter for graduate program for deemed University; and Presenter at ICFP 2025 Bogotá / 2022 Thailand, Baltimore, Orlando and Singapore etc.