February 2024
I have published a study in World Development looking at the trends in violence against women during the pandemic, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. The paper is titled "COVID-19 and violence against women: current knowledge, gaps, and implications for public policy". It is joint research conducted under the project COVID-19, social distancing and violence against women in Brazil (BRAVE), that I led in partnership with the research group Brazilian Women in Economics (hosted by the University of Sao Paulo), and which was funded by the UKRI Agile Covid-19 GCRF and Newton Fund initiative (grant number EP/V029088/1).
June 2023
I have contributed a chapter to the new Elgar Handbook on the Political Economy of Health Systems, published by Edward Elgar. The chapter, titled “Political economy of public financing of health in low-and-middle-income countries”, is joint work with Sumit Mazumdar.
February 2023
I gave a keynote address at the 7th Austrian Health Economics Association Conference, whose theme for 2023 was "Looking beyond borders: Global health economics". My presentation was on the 23rd February 2023 and was titled "Giving peace a chance: The consequences of conflict and peace process for maternal and child health in Colombia". You can watch my keynote presentation on YouTube.
January 2023
I have been appointed a member of the NIHR Global Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR) Funding Committee, starting from January 2023. The NIHR Global HPSR scheme is one of the largest funding streams in the UK for global health research.
I have published a new study in Health Policy and Planning with a scoping review of applied epidemiological, statistical and econometric studies that examine causal health impacts of forced displacement. This is joint research conducted under the project "Redressing Gendered Health Inequalities of Displaced Women and Girls in contexts of Protracted Crisis in Central and South America (ReGHID)", funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund initiative (grant number ES/T00441X/1). You can read the full paper online, which is available open-access.
The World Bank has published two policy briefs including results from the research project COVID-19, social distancing and violence against women in Brazil (BRAVE), that I led in partnership with the research group Brazilian Women in Economics (hosted by the University of Sao Paulo), and which was funded by the UKRI Agile Covid-19 GCRF and Newton Fund initiative (grant number EP/V029088/1). The policy briefs, published in January 2023, are available from the Covid-19 and Violence Against Women webpage and were developed jointly with colleagues from the World Bank.
July 2021
I have published a new study in PLoS Medicine showing links between reduced conflict violence during the peace process in Colombia and better pregnancy outcomes. This is joint research with Giancarlo Buitrago (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) and is part of the large "War and Peace" project, funded by the Joint Health Systems Research Initiative (MRC/ESRC/DFID/Wellcome Trust). You can find a summary of our study in the paper's press release, and the full paper is available open-access.
March 2021
Our large project War and Peace: the Health and Health System Consequences of Conflict in Colombia (MRC/ESRC/DFID/Wellcome Trust), led by the University of York in partnership with Universidad de los Andes, ended in March 2021. Insights and outputs from this project will keep arising throughout this year and beyond, however! You can watch the recorded final event of the project containing various highlights of our research work.
August 2020
I am the Principal Investigator of an exciting new project that has received funding to assess the impact of social distancing measures on domestic violence against women. This research, a partnership with the University of São Paulo, will focus on the two largest metropolitan regions of Brazil, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with some national-level analysis. The project - COVID-19, social distancing and violence against women in Brazil (BRAVE) - also aims to assess the indirect social consequences of increased domestic violence through health costs, labour productivity and supply and other issues. You can find more details about this project on the University of York's COVID research webpage.
BRAVE is one of 20 projects funded via the UKRI Agile Covid-19 GCRF and Newton Fund call. You can find out more about this important funding initiative and the other funded projects in the UKRI press release.
July 2020
A new book edited by myself and CHE colleagues has been published by World Scientific as part of their series in Global Health Economics and Public Policy. Global Health Economics: Shaping Health Policy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries contains a foreword by Maria Goddard (CHE Director), editorial by Amanda Glassman and contributions from a number of CHE researchers.
The book is available to buy in hardcover, but is also available via open access (i.e. completely free!) through the following link: Global Health Economics: Shaping Health Policy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Once you are on the webpage, click on Full Book View and it should download the full publication for you.
May 2019
My paper entitled "Potential determinants of health system efficiency: Evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean" (joint work with Misael Anaya-Montes and Peter C. Smith) has come out in PLoS ONE. It examines the levels of health system efficiency and their possible determinants across Latin American and Caribbean countries using national-level data for those countries, as well as for other emerging and developed countries. This is an open access paper that you can access and download for free through the PLoS ONE website.
March 2019
On the 20th March 2019, my Colombian research partners gave a seminar at the Centre for Health Economics, where they presented initial results of qualitative research conducted within our collaborative project War and Peace. The work has involved interviews and focus groups with health professionals, community and health promoters’ trainees of diverse backgrounds including men and women, FARC ex-combatants, victims and stakeholders in Colombia. You can access the recorded presentation and slides here: Security, Conflict and Peace (SCoPe) network seminar: Is Colombia marching to a post conflict era?.
April 2018
I am the Principal Investigator of an inter-disciplinary research project to assess the consequences of the Colombian conflict and 2016 peace accord on population health, the health system and post-conflict health policy. Our two-and-a-half year project entitled War and Peace: the Health and Health System Consequences of Conflict in Colombia has been awarded £0.8 million by the Joint Health Systems Research Initiative (MRC/ESRC/DFID/Wellcome Trust). The project will see York researchers from the Centre for Health Economics and Department of Politics partnering with colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Universidad de los Andes in Bogota (Dr Oscar Bernal, Escuela de Gobierno, will co-lead the project in Colombia). You can find more about the project in our CHE press release.
August 2017
Our Global Health team at CHE has been awarded a £2 million grant, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), to establish a Global Health Research Group on Global Health Econometrics and Economics (GHE2). Our group will use the 3-year funding to evaluate various large-scale health policies in Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia, in partnership with leading research institutions in these countries. Follow the links to one of the press releases and to a lay summary of the work for more details.
July 2017
I have been appointed co-leader of the Global Health Team at CHE. Find out more about our research activities at https://www.york.ac.uk/che/research/global-health/.
January 2017
My co-authors and I have been awarded the American Economic Journal (AEJ) "Best Paper Prize" 2016!
The American Economic Association has chosen my joint paper with Marty Gaynor and Carol Propper on hospital competition in the NHS, "Death by Market Power: Reform, Competition, and Patient Outcomes in the National Health Service", for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy Best Paper prize. This is a prestigious prize that covers papers published in the last three years so I am delighted of course!
The prize was awarded in Chicago during the ASSA meetings (January 2017) and this is the link for the press release: https://www.aeaweb.org/news/press-release-awards-2016, where you can now download a complimentary copy of the paper.
A non-technical summary of our work is available at the American Economic Association website.
January 2017
I have been appointed as an Associate Editor of the Journal of International Development (Wiley).
December 2016
I have been awarded a grant as Principal Investigator for a study of health system efficiency in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The study will provide a quantitative and comparative assessment of the efficiency with which the health systems of LAC countries translate existing resources into a given level of performance; identify the main determinants of different levels of efficiency across LAC health systems; and give insights into the magnitude of influence of these determinants on current levels of system efficiency in the region. The project is funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and will conclude in July 2017.
September 2016
I took a position as Reader (Associate Professor) in Global Health Economics at the Centre for Health Economics (CHE), University of York. Exciting times ahead!
March 2016
I was awarded an ESRC White Rose DTC Collaborative PhD scholarship for a student to work under my supervision starting in September 2016. This is a fully-funded, 3-year PhD studentship on the topic of development assistance, intrasectoral resource allocation and health outcomes, and is a collaboration between the Department of Economics at the University of Sheffield and The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
July 2015
I was awarded a grant as Principal Investigator to develop a proposal for a new health framework to better assess countries’ development in health. The grant was awarded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, on behalf of the nine co-convenors of the Equitable Access Initiative (EAI) which include Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, UNAIDS, UNICEF, UN Development Programme, UNITAID, UN Population Fund, WHO and the World Bank. Arne Hole (Sheffield) and Peter C. Smith (Imperial College) are also part of the research team.
Consultation meetings with convening partners, civil society and private sector organisations have been held in New York in parallel with the first days of this year's UN General Assembly, to gather feedback on our preliminary work. The final framework was presented, alongside alternatives developed by other academic groups, to the EAI co-convenors and a panel of international experts in February 2016.
July 2015
I gave a presentation as keynote speaker at the Twentieth Symposium of the Government Statistical Service in London, on the 1st July 2015. The symposium was organised by the Office for National Statistics and its theme was "Methodologies for Better Decision Making". The title of my presentation was "Causality, instruments and global health policy", where I presented results from a joint paper with Peter C. Smith on the effects of health coverage expansions on population health. Link to the event: https://goo.gl/ZW9xoS.
September 2014
I am now working as a Lecturer in Economics at the Department of Economics, University of Sheffield: a new challenge!
March 2014
On the 4th March 2014 I visited the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York as a guest panellist. The event, part of CFR's Unfinished UHC Agenda Roundtable Series, was entitled "Sustainably Financing UHC: The Challenge of Purchasing". My opening remarks and subsequent discussion focused on the existing evidence regarding the ways various purchasing methods impact health systems moving towards universal health coverage.
February 2014
I presented a seminar at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, on the 12th February 2014. The presentation, entitled "Universal health coverage, equity and health outcomes" (ongoing research with Peter C. Smith and Lara Brearley), was broadcast live and you can watch the recorded event through this YouTube link (the actual presentation starts at the 12:50 mark).
September 2013
On the 23rd of September, 2013, I had the opportunity to speak about the key findings of my work on universal coverage, health systems financing and equity (in progress, jointly with Peter C. Smith and Lara Brearley) at the launch of the report "Universal Health Coverage: A Commitment to Close the Gap", published by the Rockefeller Foundation, Save the Children, World Health Organization and UNICEF. I have written a post summarising our findings at the Rockefeller Foundation blog. The full text of the report is available through this link: Universal Health Coverage: A Commitment to Close the Gap (full PDF report).
The event was held in New York and consisted of a panel discussion hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation together with the Permanent Missions of France, Japan, and Thailand to the United Nations. Speakers included Seth Berkley (GAVI Alliance), Mickey Chopra (UNICEF), Nils Daulaire (Health and Human Services, USA), Anne-Marie Descotes (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France), Carissa Etienne (Pan-American Health Organization), Tim Evans (World Bank), Elizabeth Stuart (Save the Children), Peerapol Sutiwisesak (Ministry of Public Health, Thailand), Keizo Takemi (House of Councillors, Japan) and Jeanette Vega (Rockefeller Foundation).
You can also watch the recorded event at the Rockefeller Foundation blog.
June/July 2013
I was an invited panellist at an event organised by the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel on the 26th June. The meeting discussed the challenges arising from projected health spending for public finances in the OECD area and how they can be addressed. A summary of the discussion and other material can be downloaded from here: The Future of Health Spending and the Implications for Policy.
In July I gave a related talk at the HM Treasury in London, focusing on the findings from the international evidence examined in my report "The impact of cost-containment policies on health expenditure: evidence from recent OECD experiences".
March 2013
I was invited to present at the OECD headquarters in Paris, within the 2nd meeting of the Joint Network on Fiscal Sustainability of Health Systems (25-26/3). I talked about the main findings of my report "The impact of cost-containment policies on health expenditure: evidence from recent OECD experiences". More information about the event and the Joint Network, as well as downloadable material including my presentation slides, can be found at the OECD website.
September 2012
My work on universal health coverage published in the Lancet (joint with Peter C. Smith) has been given some press coverage:
Bloomberg, Universal Health Care Shouldn't Be Reduced, Lancet Says
New Scientist, Paying for healthcare benefits only the rich
Imperial College London website, Universal health coverage improves health for all
The Lancet Series on Universal Health Coverage was launched in an event in New York (26/09/2012), featuring speeches by Dr Margaret Chan (Director-General of the World Health Organisation) and Dr Jeffrey Sachs (Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University) among others. You can watch the recorded event here: The Lancet Series on Universal Health Coverage - Launch event (video)