Bishal Gyawali

Bishal Gyawali

Postdoc

ORCID: 0000-0002-8315-1925

Overview

I am a Postdoc in the Global Health Section. I graduated with a Ph.D. in Public Health from Aarhus University, Denmark in 2019. My Ph.D. study investigated the effectiveness of a female community health volunteer-delivered intervention in reducing blood glucose among adults with type 2 diabetes in Nepal. For the past 3 years, I am leading the Diabetes Prevention and Management by Lay Health Workers in Nepal Project funded by the World Diabetes Foundation, Denmark. I have previously worked for the World Health Organization, Family Planning Association of Nepal, and UNAIDS Collaborating Centre for socio-epidemiological HIV Research, Japan. I am the recipient of the prestigious ‘Emerging Leaders Award’ awarded by the World Heart Federation in 2020, and the ‘Global Non-communicable Disease (NCD) Scholars Award’ awarded by Johns Hopkins University in 2018.

Research interests and expertise

My research seeks to reduce the burden of NCDs in the community. My substantive research works have been on type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cervical cancer, and mental ill-health and common risk factors for these and other conditions, such as overweight/obesity, diet, physical inactivity, and alcohol and drug use. Over the past five years, my work has focused on developing, implementing, and evaluating community-based interventions to prevent and control NCDs in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). I am also involved in conceptualizing, designing, implementing, and analyzing rigorous community-based quantitative observational and experimental studies (randomized trials), systematic reviews, meta-analyses as well as qualitative studies focusing on NCDs. I have extensively published my findings in several peer-reviewed journals, which are widely cited in the international research field.

Ongoing research projects

  • Understanding how mobility affects forcibly displaced people's continuity of diabetes and hypertension care in Uganda and South Sudan (CONTINUITY)
  • Self-regulation and mental health of poverty-affected adolescents in LMICs (ALIVE)
  • Support by peers in diabetes and cardiometabolic risk in LMICs (SPIDER)
  • Addressing pathway to care for NCDs in Nepal

Teaching

I am responsible for coordinating Global Health Masters Course Introduction to Applied Epidemiology and NCDs and Disaster Management Masters Course Research Methodology and Ethics and have teaching responsibilities within NCD epidemiology as well as mixed methods designs in implementation research. In addition, I am a course leader and instructor of MOOC Chronically Ill in an Emergency: Why Mental Health Matters (launched July 2021).

Conferences and seminars

I have presented my works in different national and international conferences and seminars, including the virtual European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Congress (Vienna, 2020), selected in a Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) Conference (Washington, 2020), International Society of Hypertension (ISH) Scientific Meeting (Beijing, 2018), International Congress of Diabetes and Metabolism (ICDM) (Seoul, 2018), International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Congress (Abu Dhabi, 2017), and Global Conference on Sexual Health (ESC) (Copenhagen, 2013).

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