Assistant Professor
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Emily H. Adhikari, MD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Maternal–Fetal Medicine, in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her clinical practice is in the Parkland Health and Hospital System where she serves as Medical Director of Perinatal Infectious Diseases, leading the response to COVID for the obsetric service. She works with leadership at Parkland Hospital and local and state leaders to coordinate infectious disease surveillance and treatment for pregnant women with HIV and syphilis as well as emerging pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, zika, measles, and ebola viruses.
Dr. Adhikari has dedicated her career to optimizing maternal health outcomes in disadvantaged populations, and conducts research aimed at fighting infectious diseases in pregnancy, reducing the primary cesarean delivery rate, and understanding substance use disorder among pregnant women. She has authored papers on HIV, syphilis, Zika, and COVID-19 in pregnancy, as well as a large cluster-randomized labor induction trial. In addition, she contributes to Williams Obstetrics and Queenan's Management of High Risk Pregnancy texts.
Dr. Adhikari is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Associate member in the Society for Maternal–Fetal Medicine, a member of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine and the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association, and an Associate member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. At the local and state levels, she is a voting member of the Institutional Review Board at UT Southwestern, a clinical expert on the Dallas Fetal Infant Mortality Review board for Congenital Syphilis, and is an institutional physician leader in the Texas Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) state collaborative to treat opioid use disorder in pregnancy.