Dr. Gauri Divan

Gauri, a developmental pediatrician, leads the Child Development Group in Sangath. Her areas of interest include early child development, developmental disabilities (with a focus on autism), and adolescent health.  Gauri established the Child Development Group with a view to creating a convergence of the areas that Sangath works within in the early years. This includes digital assessments of child development, universal interventions for supporting child development, developing and evaluating targeted interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders, and exploring the underpinnings of suboptimal developmental trajectories and ways to buffer these adversities. The CDG, under her leadership, is the first group to be actively working across all three major Sangath sites in Goa, Delhi, and Bhopal. Gauri is on the Scientific Committee of the International Congress on Evidence-Based Parenting Support (I-CEPS), a virtual partnership that aims to improve access to evidence-based approaches to early child developmental support. She served as a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on the Future of Care and Clinical Research for Autism from 2019 to 2021 and is the founding Global Senior Leader for South Asia at the International Society for Autism Research. Additionally, she has been a member of several Technical Advisory Groups for the Government of India, including those for the national program for disabilities and the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram.