Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne

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The Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne, is the consortium co-lead. A hub of global health expertise for more than 20 years, the Institute works to improve the public health and future of vulnerable communities through global health research, education and inclusive development. The Institute establishes the evidence base for strengthening health systems and extending universal health coverage to promote health and wellbeing across the region’s diverse communities. The Nossal Institute supports regional and global partners by supporting future leaders, health workers, building evidence and translating evidence and innovative methods into sustainable changes.

Alan Whitley

Alan Whitley is a CPA qualified accountant, skilled in preparing budgets that inform decisions, financial analysis and providing sound business advice.
Prior to joining Nossal, Alan worked at the University of Melbourne for 19 years in a variety of finance roles.
Alan is passionate about assisting managers meet their strategic and operational needs and supporting staff resolve finance issues.

Dr. Alex Robinson

Dr. Alex Robinson is the Head of the Disability Inclusion in Health and Development Unit at the Nossal Institute for Global Health. Alex’s work experience crosses applied development research, policy and practice. He has extensive experience of disability inclusive practice from inclusive education to livelihoods and social protection and from emergency preparedness to humanitarian response.
Alex is engaged in disability inclusion in disaster risk reduction (DRR) at the regional and international policy level. He was co-founder of the Disability-inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction Network that played a lead role in ensuring disability inclusion in the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030. Alex has a PhD in development studies and is particularly concerned with issues of inclusion, risk and resilience within sustainable human development.

Angela Mudford

Angela Mudford is a communications generalist with significant experience delivering communications in diverse industries.
She is a storyteller with the ability to translate complex concepts into clear and concise messages for targeted audiences. At Victoria University and University of Melbourne, Angela connected and collaborated with researchers and subject experts to share their knowledge with the community.
As the Communication Officer for ACHPER, the professional body of all health and Physical education educators, she developed a strategic engagement plan for the association and produced advocated the organization’s mission while promoting professional learning opportunities to members.
Angela is passionate about creating greater community good.

Barbara McPake

Professor Barbara McPake is a health economist by background and believes in interdisciplinary approaches to health systems research. She has been involved in health systems research since the 1980s and has worked across three British universities: University College Swansea, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.
Barbara’s research focuses on the application of economic theories and methods to the understanding of issues in health system strengthening in low and middle-income countries. Her work has focused on health financing, contracts within public health systems, health workforce, hospital reform and the health system issues of conflict affected states. She is currently focused on the economic, demographic and epidemiological transitions undergone by middle income countries, and how health systems respond to questions of emerging infectious diseases exacerbated by economic transition, rising income and wealth inequalities, and epidemics of chronic disease
Barbara has made significant contributions to training several generations of health system leaders across the world especially in health economics, through post-graduate training and PhD supervision. She has been involved in research that has made recognisable contributions to our discipline such as some of the earliest work on user fees and affordability and the application of new public management ideas in African and Asian contexts. Barbara’s current work focuses on the issues for health systems of transition in the Asia-Pacific region. Barbara is Chair of the Board of Health Systems Global and a Member of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security Technical Reference Group.

Chris Waterworth

Chris Waterworth has over 20 years of experience as a practicing clinical audiologist, specialising in aural rehabilitation. He is passionate about improving access to care for people with limited access to rehabilitation through research, training, education and advocacy.
He has worked on a number of projects in the Asia-Pacific region including Timor Leste, Tonga and Vietnam. His most recent focus has been in Cambodia, where he developed audiology training programs, and lead research projects to highlight the need for prioritised policies and interventions for the delivery of effective ear and hearing care (EHC). Chris is completing a PhD primarily focused on understanding the barriers and opportunities to improving access to EHC in low- and middle-income countries.
Chris is a lecturer in global audiology and aural rehabilitation in the Masters’ of Clinical Audiology at the Department of Audiology & Speech Pathology, The University of Melbourne, however his passion for training education extends beyond this. He is co-designing practical resources and online audiology training models in Tanzania, Cambodia and Tonga, in collaboration with Rotary International and the University of California, San Francisco.
He serves on the board of the Graeme Clarke Foundation, and is the World Hearing Forum, East Asia/Pacific regional representative and Audiology Lead for the Global OHNS initiative.

Clare Strachan

Clare Strachan is a Principal Advisor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health. Clare is cross-sectoral in her approach to global health and has a broad range of experience and interests including health and community systems strengthening, health financing and governance, epidemic preparedness and response, and communicable and non-communicable disease control.
Her technical work has focused on operational research, large scale evaluations and strategic reviews, and evidence-based program design and implementation. Some of her recent projects have included an evaluation of Gavi’s co-financing and sustainability and transition policies, a thematic review of the Global Fund’s health and community systems strengthening investments, the external review of the Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health, a review of the Welcome Trust’s epidemic investments portfolio, and an evaluation of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’ Pacific Island Program.
Clare holds a postgraduate degree in Public Health in Developing Countries from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as an undergraduate degree in Development Studies from the University of Liverpool.

Daniel Strachan

Daniel Strachan is a social scientist whose research aims to support more equitable and effective health system development (and ultimately healthier communities) through engagement with community perspectives and approaches to health.
His research has primarily focused on the development and evaluation of interventions that can be implemented in real life settings, often by community health workers (CHWs). These interventions have typically aimed to improve maternal and child health, child development and disease control outcomes through strengthened health and community systems. He has a particular interest in the performance priorities of CHWs and how these are formed and shaped by the communities they work within.
Recently, through the Health Worker Voices Project, Daniel has sought to capture the perspectives of health workers around the world as they and their health system’s contend with the challenges of COVID-19. He has also, with colleagues at University College London (UCL) and the University of Ghana just been awarded a UK Medical Research Council grant to explore contextual awareness, health system responses and preparedness for a diabetes intervention in Ghana.
Daniel co-coordinates the Global Child Health and Primary Health Care and Global Health modules within the University of Melbourne’s MPH program. Previously (to 2019) Daniel was a Lecturer in Global Health and co-Director of the MSc in Global Health and Development at UCL’s Institute for Global Health. He has led and worked within research projects in urban and rural Australia, the UK, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Southern Sudan and Uganda where he was based between 2007 and 2013.
He has a PhD from UCL’s Institute for Global Health, an MSc in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of Melbourne.

Emma Fawcett

With access and equity in education running as a through line in all her career, Emma Fawcett has an enthusiasm for learning design that places the learner’s experience at its centre. She is excited by pedagogical approaches that respond to the diversity of learners’ experiences and by ways to integrate creative thinking and storytelling into curriculum design.
Emma has experience working internationally, as the South Asia In-Country Coordinator for Engineers Without Borders Australia’s education and volunteering programs and in public education system strengthening with Ateneo Centre for Educational Development in the Philippines.
Her work has focused on creating pathways for re-entry into education, in program coordination with youth re-engagement programs and then as a teacher in Transitional Education at Victoria University Polytechnic.
Emma has a background in adult education, international and community development and the performing arts. She holds a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and a Master of Theatre (Dramaturgy) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Felix Kiefel-Johnson

Felix Kiefel-Johnson is an early career researcher passionate about understanding and promoting disability inclusion across the Asia-Pacific region. Felix is working on a longitude qualitative study into the lived-experiences of families of students with disability throughout the COVID-19 response in Victoria, Australia. He has collaborated on the Scaling Up One Health Approaches in the Greater Mekong Sub region project.
He has experience as a disability and education support worker with neurodiverse children in Sweden and Australia. He holds Master’s of Social Work from the University of Melbourne and a Master’s of Social Anthropology from Stockholm University.
Felix is interested in how cultural understandings of disability shape notions of identity, personhood and citizenship in different societies, and how this impacts on universal access to healthcare, rehabilitation and inclusive development. He believes cultural humility coupled with social justice is crucial for understanding human diversity and promoting the rights and participation of people with disability in global contexts.

Fleur Smith

Fleur Smith brings together clinical and global public health experience to provide practical, innovative applications of disability inclusion and rehabilitation concepts and practices to research and development projects. Fleur’s interest areas include childhood disability and promoting systems and supports for the inclusion and wellbeing of children with disabilities and their families.
She’s recently worked on developing a Toolkit for Disability Inclusive Healthcare for the World Health Organization (WHO) and completed a study for Wateraid Cambodia on the accessibility of WASH in health care facilities. Fleur contributed to research on inclusive eye health care practices in Indonesia and she provides technical advice on disability inclusion to DFAT via the CBM-Nossal Institute Partnership Help Desk.
Fleur is a practising paediatric occupational therapist who has worked in a variety of health settings in Australia and overseas. She spent a year in Samoa where she focused on capacity development with local fieldworkers in an early childhood intervention program, and on the promotion of disability inclusion within the community.
Fleur’s occupational therapy background with inclusion, participation, health and wellbeing as core concepts, provides a solid foundation for her work.
She has a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy from La Trobe University and a Master of Public Health (International Health) from Monash University. Fleur completed an internship at WhO Western Pacific Regional Office., Fleur Smith brings together clinical and global public health experience to provide practical, innovative applications of disability inclusion and rehabilitation concepts and practices to research and development projects. Fleur’s interest areas include childhood disability and promoting systems and supports for the inclusion and wellbeing of children with disabilities and their families.
She’s recently worked on developing a Toolkit for Disability Inclusive Healthcare for the World Health Organization (WHO) and completed a study for Wateraid Cambodia on the accessibility of WASH in health care facilities. Fleur contributed to research on inclusive eye health care practices in Indonesia and she provides technical advice on disability inclusion to DFAT via the CBM-Nossal Institute Partnership Help Desk.
Fleur is a practicing paediatric occupational therapist who has worked in a variety of health settings in Australia and overseas. She spent a year in Samoa where she focused on capacity development with local fieldworkers in an early childhood intervention program, and on the promotion of disability inclusion within the community.
Fleur’s occupational therapy background with inclusion, participation, health and wellbeing as core concepts, provides a solid foundation for her work.
She has a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy from La Trobe University and a Master of Public Health (International Health) from Monash University. Fleur completed an internship at WhO Western Pacific Regional Office.

Greg Armstrong

Greg Armstrong is a multidisciplinary public health researcher with a PhD in International Health from the University of Melbourne. He was recently awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the National Health and Medical Research Council.
During the past nine years, he has undertaken public health research and consultancies in Australia and in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), specialising in mental health, suicide prevention, substance misuse and program evaluation.
Greg is implementing a program of research related to mental health and suicide prevention in LMICs and culturally diverse communities in Australia. He is leading novel research into media reporting of suicide-related news in India and elsewhere in Asia, a population-level approach to reducing suicide rates and improving suicide-related attitudes and prevention activities.
He is also a co-investigator on an NHMRC-Global Alliance of Chronic Diseases grant, developing and testing a culturally appropriate model of mental health first aid for LMICs. He is also engaged in developing and evaluating an Indigenous suicide gatekeeper-training course.
Greg has published more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Mental Health Systems and the Journal of Family Studies. He is a member of the National Research Committee for the Australian Association of Social Workers. He is also a member of the Special Interest Group on Suicide and Media for the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

Dr. Hang Li

Dr. Hang Li is a research fellow with an interest in population analysis and a focus on surveillance of NCD epidemiology. He has extensive population health research experience in Beijing, China, including epidemiological research in SARS and non-communicable diseases control, health service, health literature, health policy and EMSS (emergency medical service system) research. He has 10-years’ working experience in Beijing Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (Beijing CDC) in the areas of non-communicable diseases control and HEHP (health education and health promotion). He also worked at Beijing Municipal Health Commission for half year, and then was appointed as Deputy Director of Shunyi District Center for Diseases Control and Prevention for one year.
As the technical advisor for China in Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative, University of Melbourne, Dr. Li’s research included: SmartVA (an automated verbal autopsy method to allocate cause of death for non-facility death), assessment of quality of cause of death, and ANACONDA (an electronic tool that assesses the accuracy and completeness of mortality and cause of death data).
Dr. Li has a Bachelor’s degree in Preventive Medicine, Master’s degree in Epidemiology and Health Statistics, and PhD degree in Clinical Epidemiology from Department of Public Health, Capital University of Medical Sciences, Beijing. He was the funding receipt of NHMRC ECF (Australia-China Exchange Fellowship) 2010-2012.

Kate Neely

Kate Neely is an evaluation and monitoring practitioner and development researcher in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). Kate has ten years of experience in the development sector, including a strong focus on WASH, systems thinking, community participation and community driven development. Kate has worked with communities in Timor-Leste, Tonga, Zambia, Tanzania, Sri Lanka and with Indigenous Australian communities in the Northern Territory.
Kate has a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Master of Adult Education. She completed her PhD in International Development in 2015. Kate has led formative evaluations for UNICEF and the Timor-Leste Ministry of Health in sanitation and risk communications. She is passionate about ensuring the voices of people experiencing vulnerability are highlighted within development. Kate is a strong advocate for equity and inclusion and ensures that these principles are evident within her work practices.

Katherine Dobson

Katherine Dobson is a mixed-methods evaluator and applied researcher with ten years’ experience advising international and community development programs in Timor-Leste, Cambodia and Australia.
She has primarily worked in the fields of gender-based violence, education and vocational training, sustainable livelihoods, agriculture, resilience and sanitation. Most recently, Katherine worked as Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Director for Mercy Corps in Timor-Leste, leading those components across a US$16m portfolio, comprised of USAID, USDA, EU, DFAT, KOICA and private foundation grants.
Katherine has a Master of Evaluation degree, which underpins her practical research and evaluation experience. Katherine is passionate about using evaluation process and findings to facilitate learning, shape strategy and improve programming – and using participatory approaches that draw on the strengths of participants and partners.

Katherine Gilbert

Katherine Gilbert is the Head of the Health Systems, Governance and Financing Unit at the Nossal Institute for Global Health.
She is a qualitative researcher with a background in human rights, and strong interest in gender and universal health coverage. Katherine has undertaken a number of applied research projects with the World Health Organization (WHO), other UN organisations, Ministries of Health and civil society organisations in these areas. Prior to her appointment at the Nossal Institute, Katherine was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Economics, Monash University (2013 – 2015) where she managed two applied research programs, including a large health financing study in Solomon Islands for the Ministry of Health and Medical Services funded by the World Bank.
Katherine has considerable experience working with multilateral agencies having previously worked with the UN in Fiji, Haiti and Solomon Islands (2005 – 2013), including as an Aid Policy Advisor to the UN Special Envoy to Haiti, former US President Bill Clinton. She is course coordinator for Comparative Health Systems as part of the Masters in Public Health at the University of Melbourne.

Kirsty Teague

Kirsty Teague has a wealth of experience in paediatric therapy, community development and public health. Kirsty’s key interests are in child development and disability, early intervention, community and family level enablers for health, evidence–based contextualised program design and implementation, and health system strengthening.
Kirsty has been involved with developing services and support for children with disabilities in Azerbaijan and rural Tamil Nadu, India, and several community level family, youth and child development, health and wellbeing initiatives within Australia and the UK.
She has worked on a collaboration with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Ministry of Health, Fiji, exploring ongoing development of services for children with disabilities and their families. Kirsty was involved in multi-sectorial stakeholder engagement, leading to collaborative adaptation and implementation of an evidence-based intervention of caregiver support for children with disabilities.
Kirsty holds a Master of Public Health from University of Melbourne and Bachelor in Occupational Therapy.

Lindsey Gale

Lindsey Gale has expertise as an occupational therapist in inclusive community development in Australia and internationally. She has previously worked with international development organisation CBM.
With doctoral research in Education, Lindsey has been able to combine an OT background with use of educational methodologies to assist others to achieve greater disability-inclusive development excellence, particularly in India. She has been working on local projects directed towards facilitating greater inclusion of people with disability in Education.

Dr. Manjula Marella

Dr. Manjula Marella is a disability inclusion researcher with core research expertise in qualitative, quantitative and psychometric (Rasch analysis) methods for developing and validating client-reported outcome measures.
Manjula has a Bachelor of Science in Optometry from India and specializes in low vision rehabilitation. She completed her PhD from the Department of Ophthalmology, The University of Melbourne, in 2011. Her doctoral thesis involved developing an evaluation framework for community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programs. Her postdoctoral research primarily focused on developing and validating the Rapid Assessment of Disability (RAD) survey to measure disability and its impact on participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in the community.
Manjula has led major research projects involving large population-based surveys for informing various disability inclusive programs throughout Asia and the Pacific, including in public health, inclusive education and evaluating disability inclusion in post-disaster response and recovery. She has supported the development of systems for monitoring and evaluating community-based programs and disability inclusive education. She has also led and contributed to several qualitative research studies on exploring the level of participation of people with disabilities in education, rehabilitation and health.

Matt Blanks

Matt Blanks is an experienced program management professional with experience in global health and international development. He has worked in various program related roles across the not-for-profit and development sectors in Australia, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Most recently he worked as a program coordinator for an Australian organization delivering surgical intervention and capacity building activities to hospitals in 17 countries across the Asia Pacific region.
Matt is passionate about working with communities to build capacity and skills, leading to positive change. He enjoys working with stakeholders to incorporate learnings into processes, and striving for continuous improvement.
Matt possesses a Bachelor of Management (Human Resources) and a Master of Project Management.

Matt Ralston

Matt Ralston is an established, reliable, resourceful, collaborative and high performing executive with proven leadership experience in commercial, NGO and University sectors in Asia Pacific and Europe.
Matt has an undergraduate Arts degree with a focus on SE Asian politics and development, Indonesian and English literature. He has a Master of Marketing, a Graduate Certificate in Management and speaks Bahasa Indonesia.
Matt has a strong track record leading and managing large-scale, multi-disciplinary programs and operations targeted to the poor and disadvantaged with Health being a focus since 2011. He has a depth of experience building effective relationships with complex clients and stakeholders, including government and major donors coupled with business development and strategic marketing expertise, including tracking and analyzing client and sector trends to inform strategy and management decision-making.
Matt is highly-focused and has a reputation of effective and timely delivery and success driving and implementing organizational change and development initiative.

Dr. Matthew Reeve

Dr. Matthew Reeve is a medical doctor specialising in public health, focusing on the areas of health program and health systems analysis and evaluation, and technical consultancy in health information systems and training/capacity building of public health professionals.
Matthew has contributed to the design, field-work, analysis and report writing for mixed methods operational/implementation research across East Africa, South Asia and the Pacific, including programs focusing on disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction and inclusive education.
He has extensive experience in monitoring and evaluation, including several years as in-country technical advisor to a large BMGF-funded HIV prevention program in Northeast India. In 2015, he completed an endline evaluation of a 7 year, $56m WHO MCH project in DPR Korea. He currently works as technical lead for the Bloomberg Data4Health and University of Melbourne’s work in the Solomon Islands, building national capacity and systems for recording cause of death data.

Nathan Grills

Professor Nathan Grills’ involvement in global health spans 20 years.
He began his tertiary studies through the Australian Defence Force Academy before transferring to Monash University to complete his medical studies. He obtained a MPH and a DPhil (Public Health) from Oxford University under a Rhodes Scholarship and is a Fellow of the UK and Australian Faculties of Public Health.
He joined the Nossal Institute in 2008.
In 2014, Nathan completed a Professional Doctorate in Public Health at Monash University using social network analysis to measure the impact of public health partnerships.
He is involved in public health training, research and advocacy. Nathan’s research expertise is in the areas of non-communicable diseases, disability inclusion, community health evaluation/monitoring, primary health care systems and understanding faith-based development agencies and programs.
Nathan has worked extensively in India, including leading a tobacco control research collaboration to develop tobacco control interventions. In the disability field in India, he led the implementation of the RAD disability measurement tool. He has developed partnerships with leading Indian institutions such as the Public Health Foundation of India, CMC Vellore, Catholic Health Association of India and EHA.
Nathan has worked in international health and development in Africa, Fiji, East Timor, PNG, Bangladesh and Nepal. He has supervised more than 40 students and volunteers through his research programs and established five health and development-focused NGOs. He has served on the board of four health charities.
He currently focuses on India where he works on disability, primary health care systems and non-communicable diseases.

Prarthna Dayal

Prarthna Dayal joined the Nossal Institute in 2008. Previously, she was a consultant for the Health, Nutrition and Population unit at the World Bank in New Delhi where she worked on health systems strengthening (HSS) and on building policy-making capacity for HSS.
At the Nossal, Prarthna has managed a portfolio of work in South Asia and provided technical assistance and research in building better health systems for maternal, newborn and child health.
Prarthna has been engaged in policy analysis; economic analysis; research design, conduct and analysis; capacity building; and relationship building and coordination with development partners and government. She has also managed and evaluated development assistant projects, primarily in India and Indonesia.
From 2009 to 2015, Prarthna led an investment case in India for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health to strengthen local health planning and budgeting. She also provided technical assistance to the Australia Indonesia Partnership for Maternal and Neonatal Health Project and conducted research for the Asia Pacific Observatory for Health Systems and Policies.
Since 2016, Prarthna has developed and delivered a multi-year blended learning course for UNICEF on health systems strengthening, conducted a comparative evaluation of nurse mentoring programs to improve maternal and newborn care in India and did a systematic review of maternal morbidity and child outcomes due to postpartum haemorrhage.
Prarthna coordinates the International Child Health subject for the Master of Public Health at the University of Melbourne. She has an MA in International Relations and Economics from the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a BA in Economics (Honours) from Lewis & Clark College, USA.

Sonja Firth

Sonja Firth is a health systems specialist, with over 12 years’ experience working in countries to implement evidence-based planning and to improve the quality of data used for health programming. Sonja has a Masters Degree in Public Health and has extensive experience developing and delivering training and providing technical support for implementation and evaluation of complex interventions across the Asia-Pacific region.
Recently Sonja worked on an initiative at Melbourne School of Population and Global Health to improve the quality of mortality and cause of death data in a number of countries including Myanmar and Rwanda. In particular she provided technical advice and training on the roll-out, management and analysis of verbal autopsy data, to better understand the causes of community deaths in LMIC. She was also part of a team helping countries analyze the quality of their mortality data, in order to improve it for policy and planning.
Previously Sonja was part of the team for the Bill and Melinda Gates and DFAT-funded ‘Investment Case’ Initiative at the University of Queensland, working with government partners and UNICEF in the Philippines and Indonesia to improve the use of data for maternal and child health policy and planning. She subsequently developed and delivered the technical content for a UNICEF-funded evidence-based policy initiative for resilient health systems to improve health planning during and following disasters.

Sumit Kane

Sumit Kane’s research focus is on low and middle-income country societies and health systems transitioning to a post-service availability phase. He is also interested in the responsiveness of health services. His research examines the questions these transitions raise for health services organisational requirements – particularly relations between people, between people and organisations, between organisations, and between people or organisations and institutions. Sumit takes a post-positivist, reflexive, critical realist stance.
Sumit joined the Nossal Institute in 2018. Prior to joining Nossal, he worked at KIT Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam. At KIT, Sumit researched health policy processes and regulation in Vietnam, India and China. His research examined pathways to maximise the equity, effectiveness and efficiency of close-to-community services in Asia and Africa. Sumit’s work included studies on trust relations in the health system in India, and operational research on how social and gender norms shape women’s reproductive actions in South Sudan. Sumit also studied the effect of performance-based financing on the motivation of health workers in Zimbabwe. At KIT, he led the Master of Public Health and Master of International Health programs.
Sumit has been involved in global health consulting and advisory work for bilateral and multilateral agencies and international NGOs. Since 2011, he has been a Visiting Professor at Gokhale Institute of Politics & Economics (GIPE) in Pune, India. At GIPE, he leads research programs on trust relations in health systems, community health systems, and the evolving status of the medical profession in society.

Tiara Marthias

Tiara Marthias is a health systems researcher with a strong interest in health equity, particularly on ensuring equitable access to quality reproductive, maternal, neonatal, and child health (RMNCH).
Before joining the Nossal Institute, Tiara was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. She has contributed to the development of policies relating to RMNCH financing systems and was the lead consultant for the development of the Indonesia national strategy for adolescent wellbeing. She has extensive experiences in working with key Indonesian government policymakers in health programs planning and evaluation.
Tiara has worked with the government and organisations in Timor Leste, Myanmar, and the Philippines on health systems and financing projects. She has been part of the development team of several international-level courses, including on health systems strengthening for LMICs and a global perspective course on COVID-19. Tiara has managed and provided technical work on research and consultation projects with international organizations including the World Bank, USAID, DFAT, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund, and the United Nations Population Fund.
Tiara’s research interests include health systems and policy analyses related to geographical inequity in the utilization of key health services, health financing analysis including evidence-based budgeting and planning for health services, evaluation research on key RMNCH and health programs as well as on strengthening the primary health care.
Tiara has authored and co-authored peer-reviewed articles published in reputable international journals as well as several book chapters. She also serves in the Board of Directors of the International Health Economics Association as the Early Career Researcher Director (2022-2027). Tiara was inducted as the Equity Initiative Fellow in Southeast Asia in 2018, a program under the Oxford-based Atlantic Fellowship.
Tiara was born and raised in Indonesia and completed her training as a medical doctor at the Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia in 2008. She obtained her Master (2011) and PhD (2021) degrees in Public Health from the University of Melbourne, Australia.