Gayani Amarasinghe

Dr. Gayani Amarasinghe is a Senior Lecturer in Community Medicine at the Department of Community Medicine, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, and a PhD candidate in health systems research at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

I trained as a physician and developed a strong interest in public health through my work in remote and resource-limited settings. My main academic interests lie in maternal and child health and health systems, with a focus on how sociocultural and structural factors shape health experiences. My research has explored different aspects of health in women and children, including nutrition, mental health, and noncommunicable diseases. I also have a longstanding passion for learning about the history, arts, and culture of the communities I belong to and work with. I enjoy bringing these perspectives into my professional and academic work. Being a part of the ECLIPSE project was a great opportunity for me, as I could contribute to and learn about bringing different perspectives on health and illness together, along with cultural and artistic elements, to strengthen community health initiatives.

Currently, I am working on my PhD project to gather evidence for a woman-centred multidisciplinary care model for pregnancies complicated with heart diseases in Australasia. This mixed-methods project includes a systematic review on multidisciplinary care for complicated pregnancies, qualitative interviews exploring the patient journey of pregnant women with heart diseases, and a discrete choice experiment on women’s preferences for receiving pregnancy care for complicated pregnancies. I collaborate with clinicians and other health stakeholders to collect data and make an impact with the findings. One interesting indirect outcome of my research so far has been developing a literature-based conceptual framework for guiding the reporting of multidisciplinary care models in research publications, in response to identifying the lack thereof. 

Equity, the inclusion of women’s voices in healthcare, and attention to cultural dimensions of health experiences are central to my research philosophy. Through CHaI, I look forward to exchanging ideas, building collaborations, and learning from others working in similar areas.

Email: gayanishashikala.89@gmail.com

Affiliation: Rajarata University, Sri Lanka