Prof Sonu Goel, Deptt of Community Medicine, PGIMER becomes youngest from country to be awarded Dr JE Park Oration at National Conference

IEP Chandigarh 

Prof. Sonu Goel from Department of Community Medicine & School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh was awarded prestigious Dr. J.E Park Oration at National Conference of Indian Public Health Association (IPHA) at Kolkata, thus becoming youngest public health fraternity in the country to have been bestowed this oration. He had already received fellowships from all 3 prestigious public health organizations namely Indian Public Health Association, IAPSM and International Medical Science Academy and MNAMS before attaining age of 40 years, besides bestowed with Dr. Vasudeva Oration and Dr. Harcharan Singh Oration by Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine at very young age. The presentation during oration on ‘Public Health Leadership: Transformation of Dream to reality’ summarised his journey of taking specialisation of management and leadership from local to national and international level. His inspiring talk was a tribute to young and emerging leaders in the discipline, and also provided leadership and management lessons to them to excel higher in career and life.  Dr. Goel has over 200 publications, edited 3 text-books on management and administration (by Elsevier’s and Oxford University Press), produced 12 films on national health programs and wrote 35 chapters in various books on public health. He has Independently completed over 80 projects with around 25 sub-national, national, and international public health organizations.  Dr Goel had also conceived two flagship programs of Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India namely International Public Health Management Development Program and Public Health Policy and Management in which trained over 1000 senior executives from over 85 countries in last 6 years and initiated Executive Leadership Program for Government of Odisha and National Health Mission, Uttarakhand in collaboration with Mahidol University, Thailand and National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Dr. Goel is adjunct Professor at two eminent global universities- Swansea University, United Kingdom and University of Limerick, Ireland. He is Chair of The Union’s Tobacco control Section and Chair-MPOWER Global Working Group on Tobacco Control.  He had also received visiting scholarships from Johns Hopkins (United States), International Union against TB and Lung Diseases, University Grants commission, Indian Council of Medical Research. He had won ‘Public Health Excellence of India’ award in 2016 and many other awards including best researcher award (twice) by PGIMER, Chandigarh. He is an Aluminus of Maastricht University, The Netherlands and John Hopkins School of Public Health, United States. He is widely travelled and had visited more than 45 countries to disseminate his research findings.