Executive Group

Mark Sculpher is Professor of Health Economics and is lead of the Programme on Economic Evaluation and Health Technology Assessment. He is also Co-Director of the Policy Research Unit in Economic Evaluation of Health and Care Interventions (EEPRU). He has been based at York University since 1997.

Mark has worked on economic evaluations of a range of interventions, including technologies to treat heart disease and various cancers. He has also contributed to methods in the field, in particular relating to decision analytic modelling and handling uncertainty. He has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and is a co-author of two major text books in the area: Methods for the Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes (OUP, 2005 with Drummond, Torrance, O’Brien and Stoddart) and Decision Modelling for Health Economic Evaluation (OUP, 2006 with Briggs and Claxton).

Martin Chalkley studied economics at the Universities of Southampton and Warwick, from which he obtained his PhD in 1986. From 1985, he was a lecturer at Southampton University and from 1999 was Professor of Economics at the University of Dundee. He joined the University of York in 2011. He is an editor of the Scottish Journal of Political Economy and a member of the MRC Methodology Research Panel. He has previously been an editor of the Journal of Health Economics, President of the Scottish Economic Society and Director of Work and Wellbeing research in the Scottish Institute for Research in Economics.

His main research areas include: remuneration and incentives for the purchase of healthcare; incentives and performance of healthcare professions; incentives and performance in healthcare labour markets; and the impact of market structure on healthcare.

Jean is Director of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at York and Professor of Development Politics. She worked previously worked at the University of Sheffield, where she was Professor of Politics, Head of the Department of Geography and Director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development, and at the Open University. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Liverpool, holds a PhD in Latin American politics and held postdoctoral studies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, with the support of the Leverhulme Trust. Jean’s chief research interests cross two broad and over-lapping fields: the political economy of development and the politics of citizenship, human rights and democratisation. She is leading work on the national and regional politics of health governance for Thanzi la Onse. In addition to this research, she is also contributing to research projects on environmental risk and citizenship in Latin America and the Caribbean and to research on children’s rights and children’s work.

Bio coming soon.

Edward Kataika is a health systems development expert, with 20 years of experience in health management, planning and economics. He holds a BSc in Economics, an MA in Health Management, Planning and Policy and a PGDip in Public Administration and Civil Service Management.

Edward has worked for ECSA-HC for seven years, starting out as Programme Manager for Health Systems and Services Development before taking on his current role in 2014. As Director of Programmes, he oversees the ever-growing portfolio of programmatic and project activities at ECSA-HC, and is the chief advisor to the Director General in all technical matters.

Gerald Manthalu is a Deputy Director of Planning and Policy Development in the Ministry of Health in Malawi. He has worked in the Ministry of Health for 17 years in the areas of strategic planning, district planning, health care financing, resource allocation, health benefits design, public expenditure tracking, monitoring and evaluation, equity and policy development and evaluation. Besides these areas, his research interests include supply and demand for health care and contracting with mission health care providers.

Joseph Mfutso-Bengo PhD is a Professor of Bioethics & lectures in Global Health, Director of the Centre for Bioethics for Eastern and southern Africa (CEBESA) at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences in Malawi. He headed both of Community Health and Health systems and policy departments. He initiated the Masters of Public Health & Masters of Science in Global Health, advisor to Johns Hopkins Bioethics-Institute US-NIAD Data Safety Monitoring Board & current President of WHO-Afro-Region Global-Summit on National Ethics Councils. He is one of the leading bio-ethicist in African & has several social-sciences innovations namely: LEGS framework, Moral-Capital-Index, VALY & Ubunthuology-Ethics.

Andrew Phillips is an epidemiologist from a mathematical background based at UCL, London. He has worked extensively on HIV observational cohorts, randomized trials and an individual based model of HIV transmission, progression and the effect of antiretroviral therapy. The latter has formed the basis for cost effectiveness analyses used to inform public health policy questions relating to HIV in both sub Saharan Africa and the UK.

Professor Seeley is a social anthropologist by training, with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Before joining the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in April 2014, she was Professor of International Development at the University of East Anglia. She worked for the Department for International Development for 13 years, prior to moving to the University of East Anglia in 2000.

She is interested in the social aspects of health, with particular interest in HIV and AIDS. Janet has worked in a number of different countries over the last 30 years. She has been actively engaged in research on HIV since the late 1980s, including four years with the Medical Research Council in Uganda (1989-1993) when she was responsible for setting up a social science research programme for the MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit, which she returned to head in 2008. Since 2014, Janet has been supporting social science and ethics research and researchers at the Africa Health Research Institute (formerly Africa Centre) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. From December 2016 she has taken up the role as one of three research directors for the STRIVE consortium.

Pakwanja Twea is an economist with the Ministry of Health in Malawi. Her passion to bring about change through generating quality evidence to inform policy has led to a focus on research and analytical work on resource allocation and efficiency in the Malawian Health Sector. This is in addition to monitoring and evaluation of public health programs, management and coordination of health sector projects, and strategic planning. Pakwanja holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Economics.

Alex Rollinger is the Global Health Programme Manager at CHE.

She is responsible for supporting and managing a number of multi-partner research projects led by CHE focussing upon healthcare challenges affecting low- and middle-income country settings including: assessing essential health package design in Malawi; evaluating the impact of the “sugar-tax” in Chile; and investigating the impact of armed conflict on health in Colombia.

Alex manages Thanzi’s day-to-day programme activities, including programme operations, responding to funder requirements, and programme finances.

Mercy Juma is the Scientific Project Administrator for the Health Economics and Policy Unit (HEPU) at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences in Malawi.

She is responsible for supporting and coordinating the activities at HEPU and monitoring progress of the Thanzi La Onse project deliverables at HEPU including; health policy engagement; health economics capacity building in Malawi and Eastern and Southern African; and research and data management.

Mercy assists the research lead in running the day to day activities at HEPU, including project management, operations, adhering to donor requirements and financial management.