Para Dance Sport Technical Team

Dr Chandu Wickramarachchi Chief Medical Officer

I am truly grateful for the privilege to join the wonderful team at Para Dance UK as their Chief Medical Officer. My responsibilities include supporting the physical and mental health of our athletes, promoting best practices within the grassroots of wheelchair/inclusive dance as well as meeting competitive regulations, and helping the organisation navigate through the COVID19 pandemic by assisting with risk assessment, guidelines, and the implementation of protective precautions.

On a personal level, dance has been a vital source of empowerment for me since childhood. Having participated enthusiastically in a wide spectrum from hip-hop to ballroom whilst at medical school, I feel a true resonance with dance and DanceSport as forms of self-expression and realising one’s potential for learning and collaboration with others. Dance builds our confidence, it strengthens our friendships, and it empowers our communities.

Since qualifying in Oxford, I have worked as a doctor across multiple specialties and am currently practicing as an Emergency Medicine (ER) physician in Northeast London. More recently, I have also been involved in a variety of digital, educational, and quality improvement projects at my local NHS Trust and have had roles in startups and diverse cross-disciplinary teams striving to innovate in health technology. In the long-term, I want to effect a meaningful positive change towards the complex and difficult socioeconomic issues affecting population-wide health outcomes (ranging from homelessness to children’s safeguarding), so I am studying a Postgraduate Law degree (LLM) alongside my clinical responsibilities to build a generalist skillset as I continue contributing to the non-profit sector. Overall, I am so thrilled to join Para Dance UK, and I look forward to being a part of their amazing work across the country: right from the grassroots, all the way to elite international competition.