Dr Prerna Banati

Dr Prerna Banati has over 20 years of international development experience as a researcher and advisor with the United Nations and other international organizations. Her work involved evidence generation and translation to support development and scaling of inclusive, quality adolescent and youth policies and programmes. She brings extensive experience at the intersections of adolescence, gender and social inclusion, and has worked widely in cooperation with governments, civil society and young people themselves.

Prior to joining WHO, she spent 10 years with UNICEF in both Headquarters and field locations. In 2010-12 she was a Takemi Fellow at Harvard University and has previously worked for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria, and for different NGOs while based in Southern Africa. Over her career, she has led a number of high-profile action-research programs on adolescent health and wellbeing. She sits on a number of advisory boards and has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, research reports and blogs.

She is an Associate Editor of the Global Social Challenges Journal. In 2018, she co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Adolescent Development Research and its Impact on Global Policy. In 2021, she released her new edited volume on Sustainable Human Development Across the Life Course: Evidence from Longitudinal Research on Children, Adolescents and Youth by Policy Press. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.