Regional Vice President Spotlight - South East Asia

IAAH Regional Vice President for South East Asia, Harish K Pemde, MD, FIAP, is a Pediatrician and currently works as a Director Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, India. He is the In-Charge of a pediatrics unit, Model Immunization Center, and Center for Adolescent Health, and is Head of the WHO Collaborating Center for Training and Research in Adolescent Health. He is a self-taught adolescent health expert with a short period studying adolescent health as WHO Fellow at Center for Adolescent Health, Royal Children’s Hospital, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia in 2015. Pemde is serving as IAAH Vice President of South Asia; he co-chairs the IAAH Youth Engagement Committee and is serving on the World Congress Scientific Committee.

Pemde has been closely associated with the development of adolescent health in India and in various WHO programs for the last 20 years. He was part of the organizing team of the first national conference on adolescent health in India in 2000, the first international training program on adolescent health in 2002, and the WHO-supported Orientation Program in Adolescent Health in 2005. Subsequently, in 2007, he organized programs to review and contribute in the development of the WHO ‘Adolescent Job Aid’ desk reference tool which became an international publication used by adolescent health practitioners across the world.

Pemde is an active member of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) which has an adolescent health sub-specialty area that Pemde contributes to on a regular basis. In addition to providing consultation for the adolescent health sub-specialty, he has served as an executive board member, treasurer, secretary, and vice-chairman of IAP adolescent health chapter. Pemde also serves as the Associate Editor of the Indian Journal of Adolescent Medicine.

Often providing consultation to organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, and UNFPA, Pemde helped to develop the WHO document Core Competencies in Adolescent Health and Development for Primary Care Providers in 2013-2015. He is considered an expert trainer in adolescent reproductive and sexual health. He helped frame India’s government strategy on adolescent health and its national adolescent health program known as Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram, which launched in 2014.

Pemde has been instrumental in advocating for the inclusion of adolescent health curriculum in pre-service undergraduate MBBS degrees in India. This curriculum is being followed by nearly 400 medical colleges in India, catering to approximately 80,000 undergraduate medical students.

Recently, Pemde and team developed “TeenAge HealthGuide”, a mobile app addressing common issues of adolescents. They are also working to develop information booklets and apps on parenting adolescents, and converting the WHO Adolescent Job Aid into artificial intelligence based, easy-to-use practice algorithms on common clinical problems of adolescents.

With greater than 253 million adolescents living in India, Pemde’s work continues to highlight the need and importance of bringing adolescent health to the forefront not only in India but around the world.