Shivani A. Patel is a social epidemiologist whose ongoing research focuses on cardio-metabolic diseases and the role of ethnic background, contextual factors – historical undernutrition, urbanization, migration, geography – and early life disadvantage in influencing cardio-metabolic disease profiles. Her expertise in this area and the relationship between these diseases and severe COVID-19 symptoms made her a natural choice for the Emory University research team that began tracking COVID-19 infection and death rates in April 2020.
Shivani currently leads this team in creating the national COVID-19 Health Equity Dashboard, a public-facing tool that tracks the differences in the impact of the pandemic across communities in the United States with an emphasis on the social determinants of health. She is an Assistant Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
Shivani also holds an adjunct appointment at the Public Health Foundation of India and is affiliated with the New Delhi-based Centre for Control of Chronic Conditions (4C). She splits her time between the Emory’s Atlanta campus and the 4C central office in New Delhi.