National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India
Dr. Gururaj is Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and a faculty member at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore, India. He is also the Head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion at NIMHANS, one of the three centres in South East Asia, which is a leading centre on injury research and programme development for low- and middle-income countries.
Dr. Gururaj completed his M.D., in India and obtained training in epidemiology at CDC, USA through a WHO fellowship. He was awarded the post-doctoral research fellowship at UCLA School of Public Health in Los Angeles, USA.
Dr. Gururaj serves as a consultant and resource person to several organisations, including the WHO in Geneva and its regional and country offices. He has been working on injury prevention and safety promotion, road safety, suicide prevention, and child injury prevention issues in developing countries, especially Asia, Middle East, and the Pacific region for more than 10 years. Dr. Gururaj has undertaken several research projects in these areas supported by WHO, Transport Research Limited, World Bank, and other agencies. He has contributed to the WHO/World Bank Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention, WHO/UNICEF Report on Child Injuries, WHO Guidelines for Injury Surveillance, WHO Report on Documenting Violence Prevention Programmes, and for the series of WHO Good Practice Manuals on Helmets, Reducing Drunk Driving, and Data Manual. He has also co-authored the chapter of traffic injury in the WHO/UNICEF report on child injury prevention. He has worked as an invited member of several national and international technical committees, including the WHO Lead Road Safety 10 Project in India, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. He has served as a founding board member of Road Traffic Injury Research Network and Secretary of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention.
Dr. Gururaj has vast experience working with national governments in a wide range of countries for road safety, violence prevention, and injury prevention. He has worked with Ministries of Oman, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, and several others to develop national frameworks for road safety and injury prevention. In India, he works closely with Ministries and state governments for promoting road safety and injury prevention and has lead the Bangalore Road Safety and Injury Prevention Programme since 2007. Several papers in national and international journals and presentations in scientific meetings are to his credit. He is the recipient of several awards, including the IRTE/Prince Michael Award for Road Safety.