Vidya Sundareshan is a doctor, educator, clinician, mentor and public health advocate. She is not only a woman of influence in Springfield but also nationally and internationally due to her focus on combining the fields of medicine and public health in all she does. As a professor and chief of infectious diseases for Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, she calls her area a head-to-toe specialty as it covers a wide range of diseases such as HIV, Hepatitis C, joint infections, pneumonia, cellulitis and others. Some of her work tracks the prevalence of a disease and the success rates of treatments. She also explores cutting-edge treatments for various infectious diseases.
Sundareshan is on the forefront of many facets of her work. As medical adviser to the Sangamon County Department of Public Health, she led the pandemic-response team during a time of great uncertainty. This demanded she take on multiple roles: responding to guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, collaborating with medical professionals, organizations and public-policy leaders, and providing guidance to anxious and concerned citizens about the pandemic.
Sammi Mander, named a Woman of Influence in 2022, is one of the people who nominated Sundareshan. She said, "Vidya was responsible for navigating us through the endless practical and emotional challenges that accompanied COVID-19 with grace, ingenuity and courage."
Sundareshan teaches medical students, residents, pharmacists and nurse practitioners. Her courses in infectious diseases often include bedside teaching as part of the work. She heads a research group for medical students, runs clinics for surgeons and nurse practitioners, sees patients and does follow-up care, provides consulting services and many other duties. She also collaborates with residents and fellows on projects and faculty development in the area of infectious diseases.
Mentoring others is Sundareshan's passion and focus. She works with medical students on research skills and is one of the faculty leads mentoring many medical students from different parts of the country. She provides professional development and mentoring to medical students to help them advance their careers in medicine. Sundareshan is the faculty lead for the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association, along with a colleague from South Korea, where she facilitates cultural and community events in familiarizing the community with south Asian celebrations.
Sundareshan's commitment to health care extends globally through missions focusing on medicine, education and community service in India, Ghana and the Caribbean. She is a frequent speaker for programs in India and Ghana geared toward medical students and physicians.
Locally, Sundareshan gets youth interested in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – by connecting middle and high school students with medical student mentors. Specifically, she has a project with the Illinois Department of Public Health Lyme Disease Task Force and high school students that has the goal of teaching them how to educate their peers on the signs and symptoms of Lyme disease.
Sundareshan represents SIU School of Medicine in more than 20 state and national committees as a content expert in infectious diseases. She is currently governor of the Illinois Southern Chapter of American College of Physicians, a worldwide organization of over 161,000 internal medicine physicians and medical students.
Growing up in New Delhi, Sundareshan attended medical school at Dr. BR Ambedkar Medical College in Bangalore, India. In May 2000, she enrolled in Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned a master of public health in May 2001. In June, she and her husband moved to Springfield where she began her residency in internal medicine with SIU, and in 2006 she moved with her one-month-old daughter to Lexington, Kentucky, to begin a fellowship in infectious diseases at University of Kentucky College of Medicine. At the same time, her husband left for Pittsburgh to pursue his residency. After finishing their work, they both returned to Springfield in 2008.
Mander said of her friend Sundareshan, "When she's not caring for her patients, mentoring her students, helping guide public health policy or helping build research and training pipelines for the physicians of tomorrow, you will find her conducting community health projects with her volunteers and raising awareness on mental health, gun violence, HIV prevention and treatment amongst those disproportionately impacted."
Sundareshan has made contributions to our community and to the world with her unwavering dedication to her profession and to improving health care.
Cinda Ackerman Klickna first met Dr. Vidya Sundareshan over a year ago and continues to be impressed by her unwavering dedication to improving health and wellbeing.
