Physician/epidemiologist leads new research center
Sunita Dodani, MBBS, PhD, has joined EVMS as Founding Director of the EVMS-Sentara Healthcare Analytics and Delivery Science Institute (HADSI).
“EVMS and Sentara created HADSI to leverage the expertise and resources of our two institutions to improve health in our community,” said Richard Homan, MD, President and Provost of EVMS and Dean of the School of Medicine. “Dr. Dodani is the ideal individual to lead this new venture. She is a physician with executive-level leadership experience in research management and extensive expertise in creating innovative models of health promotion. She helped launch and lead a program very similar to HADSI in Kansas.”
Dr. Dodani earned her MBBS (equivalent to the MD degree) at Aga Khan University Medical College in Karachi, Pakistan, where she completed her residency in family medicine and undertook training in preventive cardiology. She continued her cardiology training at the University of Colorado and at Good Samaritan Center in Phoenix, Arizona, before completing her PhD in Epidemiology in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Dodani comes to EVMS from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla., where she was an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and College of Medicine. She was affiliated with the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., as Adjunct Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine, consultant and research affiliate with Community Engagement and Office of Health Disparity Research, and research collaborator in the Department of Medicine. She also was a volunteer with the Center of Innovation on Disability and Rehabilitation Research at the Malcolm Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville.
Immediately after graduation, Dr. Dodani was on faculty at Aga Khan University, where she directed the Cardiovascular Research Unit in the Department of Medicine and was Director of Research in Family Medicine. She also was Director of the Pakistan Medical Association in her native Karachi.
After coming to the United States, she served as Instructor of General Internal Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Subsequently, she held a range of increasingly responsible positions at George Reagent University in Augusta, Georgia, where she held, among other positions, the role of Assistant Dean of Research for the College of Nursing.
Prior to her work at the University of Florida, Dr. Dodani was Founding Director of the Center for Outcome Research and Education in the School of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Also in Kansas, she was Divisional Head of Outcome Research, Education and Quality Care in Internal Medicine.
Her research interests focus on health disparities related to cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes. For instance, she was principal investigator on a $3.5 million NIH-funded program that worked with African-American churches to help prevent diabetes via lifestyle interventions.