Nandita Murukutla, Ph.D., is the Vice President, Global Policy and Research, at Vital Strategies, where she leads a team that investigates the social, behavioral and political factors affecting the success of health interventions and policies.
Seeking to empower policymakers and program managers to make evidence-based decisions that achieve desired outcomes and protect investments, Murukutla collaborates with academic experts and leads a team that conducts research, monitoring and evaluation, and policy analysis. Governments and other stakeholders in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Eastern Europe have applied this research in the areas of food policy, road safety and injury prevention, tobacco control, maternal and reproductive health, and the public health response to COVID-19.
Murukutla provides scientific leadership by publishing in leading peer-reviewed journals and mass media, and by representing Vital Strategies in interactions with the U.N. and its treaty bodies. She serves on advisory committees and task forces convened by governments, multilateral organizations and international nongovernmental organizations. She has additional oversight of policy, advocacy and communication programs in India, where she works with a team of social marketing experts to implement programs at the national and subnational levels. Murukutla has a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Yale University.
