Dr. Malini B. DeSilva is a Senior Research Investigator and the Co-Director of the Pregnancy and Child Health Research Center at HealthPartners Institute. She is also an affiliated faculty at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Medicine’s Global Health Pathway and a practicing physician for both the HealthPartners Travel & Tropical Medicine Department and the St. Paul-Ramsey County Tuberculosis Clinic. She received her MD from Mayo Medical School and an MPH from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Dr. DeSilva completed her Med-Peds residency at the University of Minnesota and is double boarded in both internal medicine and pediatrics. Following residency, she completed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.

Dr. DeSilva’s current research focuses primarily on refugee and immigrant health and vaccine preventable diseases. Health disparities issues have been at the center of both her clinical and research interests, particularly focused on non-English speaking populations and addressing vaccine safety issues in pregnant patients. She is the lead HealthPartners investigator for two CDC funded research networks, the Center of Excellence in Newcomer Health and VISION (Virtual Network: Investigating the Risk of COVID-19-Associated Outcomes and COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Using Integrated Medical and Public Health Records).

Other offices/titles: Staff physician, HealthPartners Department of Infectious Diseases and Travel and Tropical Medicine Center; staff physician, St. Paul-Ramsey County Tuberculosis Clinic

Joined the Institute: 2019

Education and training: MD, Mayo Medical School, Rochester, MN; MPH, University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis; Certificate of Tropical Medicine, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Overview/research interests: Refugee health, vaccine-preventable diseases, health disparities, and integration of public health and medicine.

Current research activities and funding:

• Vaccine Safety DataLink
• Effectiveness of Maternal Tdap Administration on Infant Pertussis Disease
• Team-Based and Technology-Drive Adherence Intervention to Improve Chronic Disease Outcomes
• Hotspotting Cardiometabolic Disparities for Simulated Advances in Population Care
• The CENTER: Center of Excellence, a Network for Training and Epidemiology in Refugee Health