The Senate meeting of Sahid Dasharath Chand Health Science University has appointed Prof Dr Sunil Kumar Joshi as the Vice Chancellor of the university.
The decision was made during a Senate meeting held at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology under the chairmanship of Education Minister Mahavir Pun. The same meeting also approved the appointment of the university’s Registrar.
Prof Dr Joshi is a senior public health expert with extensive academic, research, and policy-level experience in Nepal and abroad. He currently serves as the Head of the Department of Community Medicine at Kathmandu Medical College, which is affiliated with Kathmandu University. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of the West of England, UK, Sri Sri University in Odisha, India, and Nepal Open University.
Academically, Prof Dr Joshi holds an MD specializing in Occupational Medicine and Hygiene and Diabetology, along with a PhD in Public Health and Community Medicine with a focus on injury prevention and safety promotion. He is the recipient of the Swedish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at Linköping University, Sweden. Notably, he is the only occupational physician registered with the Nepal Medical Council and the first Nepali Professor of Community Medicine at Kathmandu University.
Prof Dr Joshi has played a key role in national health policy development. Since 2006, he has worked as a national consultant for the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health and Population, contributing to injury prevention policies, road safety action plans, and post-crash response frameworks in Nepal. He was also instrumental in formulating Nepal’s National Policy and Strategy for Occupational Injuries and Diseases, which has been incorporated into the Labour Act, Labour Rules, and Social Security Scheme Operational Guidelines.
In addition, he initiated Nepal’s first master’s program in Environmental and Occupational Health at Nepal Open University. He currently serves as the Nepal Director of the Nepal Injury Research Centre under the NIHR Global Health Research Group and has previously chaired the Institutional Review Committee of Kathmandu Medical College for a decade.
Prof Dr Joshi is the President of the Society of Public Health Physicians Nepal for the 2023–2026 term and has served as a Board Member of the International Commission for Occupational Health from 2018 to 2024.
His appointment is expected to strengthen academic leadership, research orientation, and public health governance at Sahid Dasharath Chand Health Science University.
