Meghana Chalasani MHA

Meghana is currently a fellow at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA). She works closely on FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s (CDER) Patient-Focused Drug Development initiative, an effort to obtain a better understanding of patient perspectives on a condition and its treatment. She also supports CDER’s Benefit-Risk Framework and its implementation in the drug review process.

Prior to the FDA, Meghana worked for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (FL), U.S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor (FL-14) and the Milken Institute’s FasterCures, a non-profit action tank that works to improve the medical research system. A health policy wonk, Meghana has worked on many legislative issues within the healthcare ecosystem, including NIH and FDA appropriations, the Affordable Care Act, the Ebola outbreak, Medicaid expansion and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Meghana also has strong biomedical research and clinical experience background in infectious diseases and genomic medicine, having worked with underserved patient populations in the United States, India, and Trinidad.

Meghana holds a bachelor’s in Medicine, Health and Society from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Health Policy and Management at Columbia University in New York, NY.