Vijay Pillai

Dr. Vijayan Pillai is a professor of social work at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research mostly deals with how women's reproductive rights and health affect children’s well-being around the world. He has spent his career looking at how giving women more power by helping them get better reproductive healthcare, giving them more rights, and respecting their choices seriously improves how children’s do all over the world. In places like Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, his projects have found that when women get more reproductive rights, their children are healthier, better fed, and have a better chance at growing up well. Dr. Pillai is associated with international organizations like the International Consortium for Social Development, and he advises on those organizations on how international development works, making sure that his research turns into real-world action. Dr. Pillai has helped create global measures that match the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, which focus on helping children by giving women more power. He stresses that things should be fair for everyone and based on rights, knowing that culture and local issues should shape programs that want to make women and children healthier and better off.