ADRI researcher, Dr Santosh Jatrana, wins prestigious early career fellowship award

ADRI researcher, Dr Santosh Jatrana  has won a prestigious early career fellowship awarded by the Australian Academy of Science for her project ‘Brain drain there, brain gain here: Understanding the health impact, regulation and health policy implications of health workforce imbalances in India’.

 

Dr Jatrana is among 16 researchers from across Australia who have received Early Career Fellowships, which support stays of between 3-12 months in India, while 33 senior scientists have been awarded Senior Visiting Fellowships, which support shorter visits of up to two weeks.

 

The Fellowships are supported by a $1 million grant from the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education through the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund, Australia’s largest fund dedicated to bilateral research with any country. The Fund is jointly managed and funded by the governments of Australia and India.

 

Dr Jatrana will work with her Indian research partners Prof Binod Khadaria form the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Prof Zodpey from the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). 

 

In the age of globalisation, health professionals have a clear human right to emigrate in search of a better life, however, growing global concern about the adequacy of health workforces to assist in meeting development goals has raised questions that give new importance to understanding the emigration of health professionals.   India, with a much lower proportion of doctors and nurses but a higher burden of disease than the developed countries, provides the opportunity for a pivotal case study to understand the impact, regulation and health policy options regarding the migration of health professionals.  

 

While Dr Jatrana’s research has a focus on India, the issues encompassed are much broader and are of interest to policy makers and researchers in around the world. 

 

Dr Jatrana had secured external funding worth $9 million- both as principal investigator and co-investigator.  She is the sole PI on a current ARC-Discovery project ‘Investigating the dynamics of migration and health in Australia: A Longitudinal Study’.

 

Information on the other stimulating projects our ADRI researchers are currently working on can be found here.