Dr Daksha Trivedi

Scientist, public health researcher, cancer survivor and health equality campaigner

Dr Daksha Trivedi was born and raised in Kenya and migrated to England with her family in the early 70’s. She grew up in Coventry before pursuing her higher education in Liverpool, London and Cambridge.

Daksha trained as a scientist and obtained her Ph.D in studies of breast cancer (King’s College, London); an M.Sc in the Faculty of Medicine, University of London and an M. Phil in Epidemiology at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge. As an academic at the University of Hertfordshire, she has an interest in Evidence-based practice, public health and health care research which has been published widely.

In late 2017 she had hardly come to terms with the painful loss of her twin brother from advanced cancer only six months earlier, when she herself was diagnosed with cancer.

Raised in a traditional South Asian family, Daksha highlights the complexities around how cancer can be perceived by South Asian and other ethnically diverse communities, where a cancer diagnosis is seen as taboo and often only under a negative lens. Her deeply moving story details the reality of surviving cancer and conveys themes of relentless determination and a commitment to positive strategies at a time of pain and suffering.

Today she works with cancer and health organisations to strive for more awareness of the need to treat cancer patients holistically, taking into account their ethnicity and cultural backgrounds, to support the patient and their carers’ wellbeing, as well as treating the disease medically.

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