Associate Professor Esmita Charani joins CIDRI-Africa
Esmita joined CIDRI-Africa as a Contributing Investigator in the last quarter of 2022. She is an honorary Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town, a visiting Researcher at Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway, and an Adjunct Professor at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kerala, India, where she is involved in helping implement and investigate national antibiotic stewardship programmes.
After completing her post-graduate training in Cambridge University Hospitals and ten years of experience as a clinical pharmacist in hospitals, Esmita began her research career. In her academic career the focus of her research has been behaviour change interventions in the field of antimicrobial stewardship, and the application of social science research methods to develop contextually relevant solutions. She is an investigator on an NIHR Invention for Innovation award investigating the development and use of a point-of-care personalised clinical decision support tool for antimicrobial prescribing, and is co-investigator on the ESRC award: “Optimising antibiotic use along surgical pathways: addressing antimicrobial resistance and improving clinical outcomes” (in England, Scotland, Rwanda, India & South Africa; 2017-2021).
Her work in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been recognised through an Academy of Medical Sciences UK-India AMR Visiting Professor award. She is an expert advisor to the Commonwealth Pharmacy Association and a Global Health Fellow with the Office of the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, England. She is involved in mentoring and supporting clinical pharmacists to implement antimicrobial stewardship interventions across different healthcare settings and economies. Her doctoral thesis investigated antimicrobial stewardship in India, Norway, France, Burkina Faso and England. She is also the Research Lead for Practice, Design and Engineering at the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit for Healthcare Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance within the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London.
Esmita completed her Masters (MPharm Hons) in Pharmacy at University College London, her MSc in Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and read for her PhD at Imperial College London.