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Veena is an epidemiologist with several years' research experience in public health, health inequalities, quality and safety, and patient experience. She has published extensively on these subjects. She joined The King's Fund in April 2009, having spent more than seven years at CHI/Healthcare Commission as a fellow in information policy, working on information analysis, policy and research issues, and leading on analyses of patient experience data, safety indicators and inequalities for example.
Prior to that she co-ordinated the production of health-related indicator sets (such as the Compendium of Clinical and Health Outcome Indicators) for the Department of Health and was a reader at the Postgraduate Medical School, University of Surrey.
She is a member of several national committees (the Department of Health's Scientific Reference Group on Health Inequalities, the health inequalities review led by Professor Michael Marmot, the Department of Health's expert group on international quality comparisons, and was also on the Department of Health's Expert Reference Group responsible for developing the Diabetes NSF). In recognition of her contribution to health research, Veena was awarded a Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health in 2005, and a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2007.
Veena has also worked on health and population issues in developing countries for international agencies, including the Department for International Development, the World Bank, UNFPA and the Ford Foundation. Veena has an undergraduate degree in economics from Cambridge University, and an MSc and PhD in epidemiology and demography from the London School of Economics and Political Science.