Designation: Program Head – Public Health & Research

Email: msbv.drrop@pvri.org

Location: Pushpagiri Vitreo Retina Institute, 241, Uma Plaza, road 9, West Marredpally, Secunderabad.

Dr M S Bala Vidyadhar is a Public Health specialist heading the Public Health vertical of PVRI. He heads the Diabetic Retinopathy (DR), Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) & School Eye Health programmes conducted across Telangana & Andhra Pradesh especially in collaboration with Government entities such as NPCB, RBSK and the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. He hails from dental background but has done his masters (MD) in Preventive- Social medicine and Public health. He has experience of working exclusively on nation-wide avoidable blindness programs as a Senior Research scientist and has joined PVRI in October, 2019.

He has previously collaborated with PVRI whilst working for Indian Institute of Public Health-Hyderabad (unit of PHFI). He has the experience of working in collaboration with a wide multi sectoral range of organizations like AIIMS-New Delhi, PGI-Chandigarh, Government Medical College & Hospital (GMCH)-Chandigarh, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR); London School of Hygiene & Topical Medicine (UK); UNICEF-Telangana and National Health Mission (NHM) along with many other public and private sector health organizations.

In PVRI, he works on Public Health program administration, Health Research, Monitoring & evaluation, capacity building & infrastructure set-up, advocacy & health communication, Quality Improvement, program coordination & management. As part of PVRI, he has headed the USAID program for Avoidable blindness in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh targeting through collaborative ROP and Low vision screening services. He is currently working on the Sight4All ROP screening project in Telangana and AP in over 23 districts. The program aims to screen over 6500 vulnerable babies every year in government neonatal centres free of cost.

Dr Bala also has the experience of working with many state health departments like Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Odisha and Karnataka as part of training and capacity building programs for doctors, nurses and other paramedical staff.

His topics of interest include Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), Public health, Quality Improvement, Health administration, advocacy & communications, HMIS, field research, etc. His work has been published on various national and international journals including the WHO bulletin. He also has special interest in developing Health communication and educational material for patients & general public.