Sushena Reza Paul

Vice-chair

Sushena Reza-Paul is a medical professional working in public health for over two decades working with marginalized and disenfranchised populations.

Having been grounded in reproductive health in her early career she focused her work on HIV from late 90s. After spending initial few years in Obstetrics and Gynecology, she moved to Bangladesh where she started her public health career in Bangladesh with well-known NGOs – like BRAC and CARE Bangladesh. She then completed her MPH and DrPH from University of Alabama at Birmingham. After joining the University of Manitoba, she set up the earliest of intervention program for The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in India which became a learning program for the Foundation as well as for the National Program on AIDS in India. She has been involved in the early research and demonstration of PrEP for female sex workers through the involvement of the community. Through WHO and UNAIDS RST, she has been involved in providing technical assistance to key populations program in several countries in Asia Pacific region. In India, she was instrumental in assisting the National Program on investing in “Community Based Organizations” and propelled the development of such an organization in Mysore-India, known as Ashodaya Samithi. She also worked towards developing the first of its kind, a sex workers academy that changed the teaching and learning pedagogy as well as the realm of community-based research.