Madhura Balasubramaniam is a patient advocate living with Crohn’s Disease and other chronic conditions, based in Chennai, India. She is a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Strategic Alliance for Intercultural Advocacy in GI (SAIA). Madhura is passionate about minimizing barriers to access to high quality healthcare for patients across the globe. Through her advocacy, she seeks to improve disease state knowledge, dispel stigma, bolster acceptance of IBD and chronic GI conditions and treatment options, and improve access to culturally sensitive and sexual orientation and gender-identify informed care. She collaborates with patient advocates and multidisciplinary clinicians from across the world to develop patient education and professional development programming for clinicians.
Madhura has over 10 years of research experience and is trained in qualitative research methods. She leverages her research experience in informing SAIA’s various initiatives and has several co-authored publications in GI space published in high impact journals. Her publications can be accessed here.
Madhura is currently a PhD student in Politics and International Relations at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and has a Master’s Degree in Development Studies from IIT Madras. She also serves as a Board Member, Rainbows in Gastroenterology (RiG).