Senbagam Virudachalam, MD, MSHP is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and a general pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). She is a faculty member at PolicyLab and Clinical Futures in the CHOP Research Institute and leads the Family and Community Health portfolio for PolicyLab. Dr. Virudachalam is also the Director of Food Equity for the CHOP Care Network, a primary care network that serves over 250,000 pediatric patients.
Dr. Virudachalam’s research focuses on food justice, advancing equity in diet quality, and health outcomes for all children. She studies cross-sector approaches to ensure that all children have stable access to healthy food environments at home and in their communities, enabling them to thrive and grow into healthy adults. Dr. Virudachalam has extensive experience conducting community-engaged research, especially regarding the evaluation of produce prescriptions and Home Plate, a food literacy and cooking skills intervention for low-income parents that she developed in close partnership with Early Head Start. Dr. Virudachalam serves on the board of directors for The Food Trust and on the steering committee for the National Produce Prescription Collaborative.
Dr. Virudachalam earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and her MD from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. She completed her pediatric residency at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Dr. Virudachalam then earned a Master’s degree in Health Policy Research from the University of Pennsylvania while completing an academic general pediatrics fellowship at CHOP.
