Usha Ramachandran, MD, FAAP

Usha Ramachandran is a general pediatrician and Professor of Pediatrics at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Dr. Ramachandran has been involved with SATHI for over a decade and took on the role of Associate Director in 2018.

She is passionate about addressing health inequities in the South Asian American community and has led NIH funded research, community outreach, and educational efforts in this field. Dr. Ramachandran co-led the planning and organization of the conference on Nutrition and Oral Health in South Asian Children in 2022.

Dr. Ramachandran’s areas of interest also include promoting early childhood development. She serves on the executive committee of the national AAP Council on Early Childhood and co-chairs the Early Literacy Committee. She also serves as Early Childhood Champion for the New Jersey Chapter of the AAP and is one of the co-leads for the federally funded (HRSA) Transforming Pediatrics in Early Childhood (TPEC) initiative. As medical director of Reach Out and Read New Jersey, she works to bring books and literacy promotion to pediatric offices that serve the most underresourced communities in New Jersey. She is engaged in research related to early literacy, early relational health, and resident education.

Dr. Ramachandran’s professional life has been dedicated to providing compassionate and high-quality pediatric primary care to all children, including the most vulnerable, through her clinical work at a federally qualified health center in New Jersey. Through educating medical students, and pediatric and family medicine residents, she hopes to inspire future generations to do the same.