Though Vidya Vishwanathan embarked on the public health journey without any interest, the initial encounters faced during clinical management of needy people in a rural area, managing disease outbreaks, getting trained and providing obstetric services to young mothers made her curious to deepen her public health journey. She later got qualified with a Master in Public Health from ICMR-National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai and started to explore further.
Fortunately, she had the opportunities to work from the grass roots, in a rural health center to State level management and had exposure in different areas of health – clinical management, outbreak management, implementing state wide health program for Children and Adolescents, women cancer management programs and tobacco control. During her 12 years journey of public health, she feels privileged to have had experiences at different working atmosphere – rural areas, fully urbanized capital city of the Tamil Nadu State and in her own directorate of public health and in ICMR – National Institute of Epidemiology, a national government organization.
