Dr Nijina M. Nazar

State Programme Head – Model Schools Emotional Well-Being Programme
Consultant, Programme Architect & Principal Investigator – Mental Health, Adolescent Health, NCD Integration & Rights-Based Health Systems

• Serve as State Programme Head, Chief Architect, and Principal Investigator for the Model Schools Emotional Well-Being Programme, providing statewide strategic and operational leadership and leading end-to-end systems design including intervention frameworks, training architecture, digital platforms, and evaluation strategy implemented across 40 schools, reaching 10,000+ students, with a clearly articulated government-led scale-up pathway across Tamil Nadu.
• Principal Investigator for the Tamil Nadu School-Based Substance Use Prevalence Study, the first state-level epidemiological mapping of adolescent substance use, generating policy-relevant evidence to inform prevention strategies, school-based interventions, and health–education convergence; study funded by the Home Department with a state-scale implementation vision.
• Principal Investigator & State Knowledge Partner for the TN RIGHTS Project (World Bank–funded; in progress), leading implementation research, system diagnostics, and policy translation to strengthen rights-based service delivery across health, disability, and social protection sectors.
• Led comprehensive statewide evaluations of the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP), Emergency Care & Recovery Centres (ECRC), trauma registry implementation in government hospitals, and the 104 Mental Health Helpline, including psychological autopsy studies to inform system-level improvements following adolescent deaths.
• Co-led randomised controlled trials (RCTs) design on Shared Medical Appointments (SMA) for diabetes and hypertension in Primary Health Centres, integrating clinical outcomes, behavioural change mechanisms, and health system performance metrics.
• Designed and executed large-scale economic burden and costing studies on road traffic injuries and suicides, applying DALY, QALY, and Net Present Value (NPV) frameworks to support evidence-based policy formulation and public financing decisions.
• Led advanced population-level analytics and decision-support modelling for large-scale public health programmes, including Makkale Thedi Maruthwam (MTM), integrating community outreach data, NCD service delivery records, mental health indicators, and longitudinal administrative datasets to inform targeting strategies, service optimisation, costing, and state-level policy decisions.
• Led the analysis and governance of large-scale administrative datasets, including SCRB data, integrating injury, suicide, and system-level indicators with health datasets to support evidence-based policy, costing, and prevention strategies.
• Currently developing a policy-facing proposal on MTM–PDS convergence for diabetes and NCD prevention, building on MTM analytics and public food-system pathways to design scalable, equity-oriented prevention and care models, while continuing active consultancy and technical advisory engagement across NCD and health systems research.
• Chief Architect for digital health systems, overseeing the conceptualisation, design, and launch of digital mental health and service-tracking platforms enabling structured screening, intervention monitoring, referral pathways, and longitudinal follow-up within public programmes.
• Member, State-Level Mental Health Policy Committee (Educational Institutions), Government of Tamil Nadu - one of eight appointed experts responsible for framing mental health policy frameworks and institutional guidelines for educational settings across the state.

• Designed and contributed to the initiation of a flagship health system intervention, including free emergency care insurance statewide.
• Developed economic evaluation frameworks to assess effectiveness of interventions.
• Created mixed-methods designs to enhance data collection and analytical processes.

• Led and coordinated large-scale, multi-partner public health research programmes, aligning government departments, academic institutions, and implementation partners to deliver policy-relevant evidence and support state-level decision-making.

National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), United Kingdom | Jan 2020 – Sep 2020

• Contributed to components of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), supporting analysis of health, ageing, and service-use trajectories for policy evaluation.
• Conducted mixed-methods research, including qualitative interviews, focus groups, and secondary data analysis, aligned with UK government research standards.
• Supported policy-oriented research outputs for government departments, translating evidence into implementation-relevant insights.
• Worked within UK and EU-funded public health and social policy programmes, adhering to high standards of research governance, ethics, and data protection.