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.