What is your background?
I’ve been conducting research and policy work in global health for over 30 years. My areas of expertise include quantitative and qualitative research in global health financing, health economics, global health governance, health system strengthening, health equity, and pandemic preparedness.
I have an ongoing research and policy collaboration with the World Health Organization and act as a Board member for Supporting Health Initiatives, Wits Health Consortium, South Africa.
I have engaged in research and policy collaboration with multiple governments and national research institutes across Africa, the UK Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency, the Government of Twenty (G20), the Government of Seven (G7), the Global Fund to Fight AIDs, TB and Malaria, the Covid-19 Round Table Task Force for the UK Cabinet Office, and more recently giving expert evidence for the Article 20 Subcommittee for the Pandemic Agreement in Geneva.
What inspired you to get into this field?
During my PhD in Political Philosophy at the London School of Economics I was asked to work as a researcher on a Ford Foundation grant project on Global Institutional Design. The project had twenty-five case study institutions, five of which were in global health governance. I was asked to lead on the five-health related institutional case studies and to conduct fieldwork and interviews in support of the analysis. My five cases were the World Bank, Global Fund, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WHO, and GAVI. The project launched in 2002, the year three of these institutions were created, thus quickly making me one of the few academic authorities on them. I spent months in many foreign countries conducting research, publishing results, and consulting policymakers.
As part of exploring difficult research and policy questions, I quickly understood the relationship between moral philosophy and global health, allowing for unique and interesting research. For example, it was evident that the single most important element that underpins any understanding of a ‘minimally decent life’ and the exercise of liberty, rights and flourishing, is health. Moreover, it quickly became clear that health is deeply political, since it is politics, and codified moral commitments to others, that will determine who gets what and why. This decision making requires the weighting and debating of evidence and trade-offs, which includes more than just technical solutions to health. I have been obsessed with these questions ever since.
When did you start at the University and what was your academic/career path?
After completing my PhD I worked for 12 years at the University of Sheffield, where I co-designed and co-taught on a joint MSc in Global Law and Politics. It was during this time that I retrained in health economics shifting toward health financing research.
I was recruited to the University of Leeds in 2017 with a mandate to co-lead a cross-faculty research theme in global health. During this time, I also began working with WHO to evidence, write, and launch the Health Systems for Health Security Framework. The success of that initiative led to increased WHO collaborations and policy work, including the design and launch of the Dynamic Preparedness Matrix (an online platform to upload data to produce country-level preparedness gap scores), research on IHR benchmarks, action reviews, and quantifiable ‘enabling’ indicators for pandemic preparedness.
Successful grants increased my research in performance-based financing modalities, estimating pandemic preparedness costs post-Covid, and most recently a project re-evaluating the emerging pandemic preparedness and response agenda.
What makes this area so important?
The prospect of anyone living a minimally decent life depends on their health. If humans matter, then their health is fundamental to their moral worth. Moreover, despite increased financing for health and the exponential growth in global health institutions, the relative gains in overall health remain underwhelming.
Furthermore, current reductions in development aid for health as well as threats to leave WHO has created additional stress on already fragile systems and unsustainable models.
Lastly, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed many weaknesses in how we ‘do global health’ which requires serious reflection. Reflections that often are not in the mainstream debates. As a result, now more than ever, we need fresh thinking about how to do global health better.
How can prospective students use the skills/learnings in their careers?
This programme caters to those interested in improving global health policy and overall population health. The programme is designed to give students a comprehensive understanding of global health, its key determinants and dynamics, as well as potential solutions.
The programme is also designed to provide new and/or improved skills in how to collate and interpret evidence, how to find and use data, to conduct sophisticated data analysis, to utilize diplomatic practice, to use artificial intelligence for research, how to employ research protocols, and how to communicate research effectively to specific audiences in global health.
These are invaluable skills and foundational knowledge for any career associated with global health, whether that is for international organizations, NGOs, CSOs, government departments, foundations, think tanks, or community-level advocacy.