Dr. Veena Pillai is a medical doctor and researcher with a special interest in working with disempowered and vulnerable populations. Veena graduated with an MBBS from the University of Adelaide in 2006, and has since worked in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia. She has completed a Master in Disaster Medicine in 2011, focused on humanitarian response. She is passionate about access to care for vulnerable populations, and has worked with people affected by HIV/AIDS, prisoners, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in both a clinical and research capacity. 

 

Veena has completed research projects looking at migrant factors in 5 migrant populations, multiple mental health intervention studies among the Rohingya and Afghan communities as well as a health needs assessment among refugees attending health clinics in the Klang Valley. Veena has conducted training in humanitarian and research ethics, de-escalation, sexual and gender based violence and clinical and research skills. 

 

In addition, Veena is active in the field of research ethics and is passionate about building research ethics capacity among the humanitarian workforce. She is part of an emerging independent ethics review group that provides assistance to existing Ethics Review Boards and provides independent review for NGO based projects. In this vein, Veena was a Keynote Speaker at the Post Research Ethics Analysis (PREA) conference at Ohio University in March 2019. She also was the first author for the chapter on Research Ethics in Refugee studies in The Health of Refugees, Oxford University Press 2019. 

 

Veena combines her research portfolio with active clinical experience, working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to ensure her clinical skills remain sharp and to retain the clinical perspective to identify important gaps.