About us

IHEA is a not-for-profit membership organization, with over 1,500 members from more than 100 countries. IHEA is guided by our mission, strategic goals and Bylaws, governed by a Board of Directors and Board committees, and managed by an appointed team.

IHEA’s mission is to foster an inclusive global community of health economists, committed to strengthening the field, sharing ideas and resources, developing and applying economic theory and methods and generating evidence for improved, equitable health and health care.

IHEA’s strategic goals are to: 

  1. Promote excellence in health economics research and teaching: IHEA pursues excellence in the field by supporting early-career researchers, strengthening the capacity of health economics researchers, teachers and practitioners and engaging around different methodological and theoretical approaches.
  2. Promote international engagement and collaboration among health economists: IHEA facilitates collegial engagement and promotes ethical collaborative practices between health economists across countries and world regions.
  3. Expand the profession and its impact: IHEA strives to increase recognition of the contribution of health economics to policy for social good, and to attract economists to the field, particularly in low- and middle-income countries and from diverse backgrounds.

Governance

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors meets virtually three to four times a year and is consulted electronically on key issues between meetings.

Kara Hanson

President

Kara Hanson

Kara Hanson is Professor of Health System Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.  She has over 30 years’ experience in health economics research, focusing on low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Africa and Asia. She has spent extended periods working in Africa and has led several large multi-partner, cross-regional research programs. Her research interests include health care financing, the operation of healthcare markets, human resources, and the economics of delivering priority health interventions. She has served on several IHEA Congress scientific committees and on the IHEA Board since 2018. Read more

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Virginia Wiseman

President-Elect

Virginia Wiseman

Virginia has been a health economist just over 20 years and a member of iHEA for 18 of those years. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia with her partner and three children and is Professor of Health Economics and Health Systems at the Kirby Institute (University of New South Wales, Sydney) and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research is very much at the ‘applied’ end of the spectrum, exploring how programs can be cost-effectively delivered to deprived populations under real-world conditions. Virginia's studies evaluate the introduction of new technologies such as point of care tests for HIV, malaria and TB in Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Another focus of her research is the evaluation of health equity and financial protection, and she is one of the convenors of iHEA’s Special Interest Group on Health Financing for Universal Health Coverage. More detailed bios can be found here: https://kirby.unsw.edu.au/people/professor-virginia-wiseman and here: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/wiseman.virginia 

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Audrey Laporte

Past-President

Audrey Laporte

Prof. Audrey Laporte is a Professor and Director of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto.  She is the Founding Director of the Canadian Centre for Health Economics and served as Chair of the Canadian Health Economists Study Group for 14 years. She has expertise in advancing econometric modelling of efficiency in health care including quantile regression and dynamic econometric modelling and also theoretical dynamic modelling of the demand for health. She was the co-Chair of the iHEA Congress in Toronto and, served as the iHEA Treasurer from 2016-2019. Read more

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Claire de Oliveira

Treasurer

Claire de Oliveira

Claire de Oliveira is a Senior Scientist/Senior Health Economist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, an Associate Professor at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and an Adjunct Senior Scientist at ICES.  Her main areas of research are in mental health and child health, including the role of mental health among high-cost patients, quality of care among patients with severe mental illness, and health and wellbeing among children.  Claire is a convener of the IHEA Mental Health Economics Special Interest Group.

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Mehdi Ammi

Mehdi Ammi

Mehdi Ammi, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University in Ottawa. His research explores issues related to the determinants and effects of the organization and financing of healthcare services and of public health systems in high-income countries. Dr. Ammi is committed to connect research and policy, and he actively involves health policy makers, health system managers and clinicians in his research projects. Dr. Ammi is currently the President of the Canadian Health Economics Association, and he serves on the IHEA Student Paper Prize Committee 2021-2024. 

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John Ataguba

John Ataguba

John Ataguba is the Canada Research Chair in Health Economics at the University of Manitoba. He was previously a professor and director of the Health Economics Unit at the University of Cape Town. He is also the Executive Director of the African Health Economics and Policy Association. His research interests include health financing, health inequality, equity in health and health care, social determinants of health, health economics methodology design and the economics of ageing. He has received many awards, including the TW Kambule-NSTF emerging researcher award in South Africa (described as the ‘Oscar Award’ for science and research in South Africa).

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Priya Bhagowalia

Priya Bhagowalia

Priya Bhagowalia is an Associate Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She teaches graduate courses on Development Economics, which examine the relationship of economic theories with macro and micro aspects of development, especially health. Her research focuses on health & nutrition, impact of price policies, cash transfers and credit on women’s empowerment, household’s health-seeking behavior. Besides teaching at prestigious universities in India and abroad, she has been a consultant to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Priya has been engaged with the IHEA special interest groups and the scientific review committees for the IHEA congress.

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Josephine Borghi

Josephine Borghi

Jo is a Professor in Health Economics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.  Jo’s research is focused on understanding how low- and middle-income country health systems respond to the incentives generated by different financing arrangements, including through the use of system dynamics and agent based modelling. Jo also leads the Health Financing Data Analysis Centre for Countdown 2030, which analyses global aid and domestic financing for Reproductive Maternal Newborn and Child Health.  Jo is co-convenor of the Health Financing for Universal Coverage Special Interest group.  Jo lives in London with her husband and three children.

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James Buchanan

James Buchanan

James Buchanan is a senior lecturer in the Health Economics and Policy Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on applying economic methods to quantify the value of precision medicine for stakeholders in the health system. He has a particular interest in understanding the costs and benefits of genome sequencing in cancer and rare diseases. James joined the IHEA Board as the representative for the Health Economists' Study Group in 2023. He co-founded the IHEA Special Interest Group on the Economics of Genomics and Precision Medicine and was a convener of the ECR SIG (2017-2021). He also helped coordinate the Mentoring Programme and organised the 2019 ECR Pre-Congress Session in Basel. Read More.

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John Cawley

John Cawley

John Cawley is a Professor in the Brooks School of Public Policy, and the Department of Economics, at Cornell University, where he is Director of the Cornell in Washington program.  John is also an Honorary Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.  His primary field of research is the economics of risky health behaviors, with a focus on the economics of obesity. He has previously served on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon), and as an Editor of the Journal of Health Economics.

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Sonja de New

Sonja de New

Sonja de New (née Kassenboehmer) is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Health Economics and Director of the Health Economics PhD Program at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on the intersection between labour economics and health economics with a particular focus on policy evaluation and the mental health and labour market outcomes of disadvantaged populations. She is an active member of the IHEA Special Interest Group (SIG) in Mental Health Economics and is the Vice President of the Australian Health Economics Society (AHES). She is also responsible for the scientific program of the AHES Conferences. Read more

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Ama Fenny

Ama Fenny

Ama Pokuaa Fenny is a Senior Research Fellow with the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economics Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana. She studies the role of health financing and targeted health system strategies to improve health seeking behavior and the use of cost-effectiveness methods to address the efficiency of health programmes. She has over 15 years of practical experience and has provided technical support to several international agencies. She has been a member of IHEA’s Scientific Committee for several world congresses and supports IHEA’s mentorship program. She is also a member of the IHEA SIG: Economics of Children’s Health and Wellbeing. Read more

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Aleksandra Torbica

Aleksandra Torbica

Aleksandra Torbica, MSc, PhD is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University and she is the current President of the European Health Economics Association (2024-2026). Previous positions include presidentship of Italian Health Economic Association (2021-2023) and directorship of Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management (2017-2022) at Bocconi University. Aleksandra served as a Special Advisor to the Chair of Pan European Commission on Health and Sustainable Development, endorsed by WHO. Her research interests focus on the interplay between global health economics and health policy, mainly in the area of economic evaluation analysis of healthcare technologies and programs. Aleksandra lives in Milano with her husband and two children.

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Tiara Marthias

Tiara Marthias

Tiara Marthias, MD, PhD is a Senior Technical Advisor at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Australia. As a health systems researcher, she focuses on geographical and socioeconomic inequality in health care service utilisation, primarily on maternal and child health. She has contributed to RMNCH financing systems policy development and led the development of the national strategy for adolescent wellbeing in Indonesia. Her previous role includes lecturer at the Health Policy & Management Department, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. Tiara is the Southeast Asia Equity Initiative Fellow since 2018 and was co-convenor of IHEA Early Career Researcher-Special Interest Group 2017-2021.

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Shiko Maruyama

Shiko Maruyama

Shiko Maruyama is a Professor in the Institute for Economic and Social Research at Jinan University Guangzhou, China. Before his move to China in 2021, he worked in Australia for 14 years (the University of New South Wales and University of Technology Sydney). His research interests include health insurance, the socioeconomic gradient of health, population aging, fertility, and applied econometrics. Shiko has been an active IHEA member since 2008. He co-founded the Asian Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics (AWEHE) in 2018. Shiko currently serves as an Associate Editor of Health Economics and as a Co-Editor of Japanese Economic Review.

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Paul Rodriguez-Lesmes

Paul Rodriguez Lesmes

Paul Rodriguez-Lesmes is an associate professor at Universidad del Rosario (Colombia). He is a regular contributor to the Colombian Institute for Health Technology Assessment (IETS), the Colombian Fund for High Cost Disease (CAC). He holds a PhD in Economics from University College London (2016), and worked with the IDB, the World Bank and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). His research focuses mainly on the study of policies associated with healthy behaviours and chronic disease prevention; demographics and child development; regulation of health markets such as pharmaceuticals or personnel; and financing and universal coverage of health services. Read more

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IHEA was formally founded on May 10, 1994, under the leadership of Tom Getzen who served as the first President, and with the support of Joseph Newhouse, Alan Maynard, Chuck Hall, Mark Pauly and Michael Morrisey, who served as the founding Directors.  Since 1999, regular elections for the Board of Directors have been held.  

  • Audrey Laporte, University of Toronto, 2022-23
  • Winnie Yip, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 2020 – 21
  • David Bishai, Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2018 – 19
  • Adam Wagstaff, World Bank, 2016 – 17
  • Terkel Christiansen, University of Southern Denmark, 2014 – 15
  • Anne Mills, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2012 – 13
  • Guillem Lopez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, 2010 – 11
  • Uwe Reinhardt, Princeton University, 2008 – 09
  • Jane Hall, University of Technology Sydney, 2006 – 07
  • Bengt Jönsson, Stockholm School of Economics, 2004 – 05
  • Peter Zweifel, University of Zurich, 2003
  • Richard Scheffler, Berkeley, University of California, 2002
  • Frans Rutten, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2001
  • Mark V. Pauly, Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, 2000
  • Alan Maynard, University of York, 1999
  • Joseph R. Newhouse, Harvard University, 1998
  • Thomas E. Getzen, Temple University, 1994 – 97

Access the Minutes of Recent Board Meetings

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Executive Committee

The Executive Committee makes decisions and takes actions on behalf of the IHEA Board between Board meetings. The Bylaws place explicit limits on the decision-making powers of the Executive Committee.

Chair: Kara Hanson

President
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Virginia Wiseman

President-Elect
University of New South Wales and LSHTM

Audrey Laporte

Past-President
University of Toronto

Claire De Oliveira

Treasurer
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health/University of Toronto

James Buchanan

Director
Queen Mary University of London

Ama Fenny

Director
University of Ghana

Finance Committee

The main source of income to fund activities to benefit our members is membership fee revenue.  Registration fees for our biennial congress are set on a cost-recovery basis. We also raise sponsorships and grants to keep membership and registration fees as affordable as possible. 

The Finance Committee monitors IHEA income and expenditure through reviewing the report of the independent auditor. It also provides advice on the budget, financial management and monitors IHEA’s investments.

Chair: Claire De Oliveira

Treasurer
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health/University of Toronto

John Cawley

Cornell University

Alec Morton

National University of Singapore and University of Strathclyde
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Di McIntyre

Ex-Officio as Executive Director

Anthony Scott

Monash University

Eve Worrall

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Andres Vecino Ortiz

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Access Recent Annual Financial Statements

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EDI PMC

The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Promotion and Monitoring Committee (EDI PMC) recommends ways of promoting EDI within IHEA, facilitates the implementation of the IHEA EDI strategy and its regular revision, and monitors progress.

Chair: Virginia Wiseman

University of New South Wales and LSHTM

Virginia Wiseman

I am Professor of Health Economics and Health Systems at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I am eager to begin my role as Chair of IHEA’s EDI Committee and to work with this incredibly motivated and enthusiastic group of colleagues. For this role, I draw a lot on insights I have gained working with research partners in Indonesia and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region to evaluate interventions to improve women’s access to quality and affordable antenatal care. Another passion of mine has been to support the continued growth of health economics in these countries, jointly supervising a number of women PhD scholars, most recently from Indonesia, China, and Papua New Guinea.

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John Ataguba

University of Manitoba

John Ataguba

I am of African ancestry. I was born in Nigeria and worked in Nigeria and South Africa before moving to Canada as a professor and the Canada Research Chair in Health Economics at the University of Manitoba. I have engaged with EDI issues at different career stages, working in North America and Africa. As the Executive Director of the African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA), a bilingual association, we have members from diverse backgrounds and strive to ensure representation across activities. I have over 20 years of experience, and my research focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, covering health financing, equity, inequality, and the social determinants of health.

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Tuba Saygin Avşar

University College London

Tuba Saygin Avşar

I am a Scientific Adviser at the National Institute for Health and Care Research in the United Kingdom (UK). I have been working in healthcare research for over ten years in Türkiye and the UK. Currently, my main interests are economic evaluation and health economics policy. Being a Turkish Muslim woman working in the UK, I have experienced and witnessed some challenges around equality, diversity, and inclusivity. I am excited about the opportunity of contributing to the ideal of a more welcoming and inclusive community.  

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Anton Avanceña

University of Texas at Austin

Anton Avanceña

Anton Avanceña (he, him) was born and raised in Quezon City, Philippines, and immigrated to the Bay Area in the US with his family in 2010. Anton is a cisgender, openly gay man. He serves or has served on other diversity, equity, inclusion, and access committees, including for the Society for Medical Decision Making and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) College of Pharmacy. He co-founded two organizations for sexual and gender minority health: Sexual and Gender Diversity in Public Health at the University of Michigan and the Texas Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research at UT Austin.

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James Gaughan

University of York

James Gaughan

James (he/him) is a white middle-class man, born and living in the United Kingdom. He lives with a disability of visual impairment. James is a mid-career researcher with 10 years of experience working at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York. His main research interests include: the interactions of care settings and how these impact on patient use and outcomes from care; productivity measurement; financial incentives and policy evaluation. James has actively participated in understanding EDI issues and contributing to policy in his own department for over five years. He is also a member of the forum for disabled staff at the University of York.

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Eeshani
Kandpal

World Bank

Eeshani Kandpal

Eeshani is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development; prior to this, she was a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. Her research aims to inform development policy to improve maternal and child outcomes. Eeshani is also an active member of the economics profession, serving as a mentor for several efforts to improve diversity in the profession, and is currently a member of IHEA’s EDI committee. She was born and raised in India and has a PhD from the University of Illinois and a BA from Macalester College.

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Yewande Ogundeji

Yewande Ogundeji

University of Calgary

Yewande Ogundeji

Dr. Yewande Ogundeji is an Applied Health Economist, Public Health Researcher, and a Principal Partner at Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF), a global health NGO. Originally from Nigeria, she received her PhD in Health Services Research from the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, United Kingdom, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Community Health Service at the University of Calgary,  Canada. Her research focuses on how alternate financing models and health financing reforms can work better to advance health equity for marginalized and vulnerable populations. she serves on several global expert working groups, including the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (PMNCH) Economics and Financing expert working group.

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Kompal Sinha

Macquarie Business School

Kompal Sinha

I am an Associate Professor of Economics at Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University and Co-Editor of Journal of Population Economics. My commitment to promoting social justice, diversity, and inclusiveness in Higher Education (HE) is demonstrated through my professional practice. My EDI initiatives within my discipline includes EDI training and development course focussing on mitigating bias and unconscious bias in higher education. Working on policy relevant issues in low- and middle-income countries across Asia and Africa has given me several opportunities to adopt an inclusive approach in my research, teaching, mentoring and capacity building in health economics.

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Phuong Tran

University of Oxford

Phuong Tran

Originally from Bac Giang (Vietnam), Phuong is a research fellow in health economics at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on multimorbidity/chronic diseases, infectious diseases, primary care, and integrated people-centered care. Phuong has lived and worked across countries in Asia, Europe, and sub-Saharan Africa, experiencing roles in both host and partner country institutions. This unique exposure has shaped her perspective on EDI and reinforced a commitment to promoting equal opportunities in science and fostering equitable research partnerships between the Global North and South. Serving on the IHEA EDI Committee allows her to advocate for systemic changes, ensuring diverse voices are heard and integrated, thereby making global health economics discourse and practice more inclusive.

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Board Search Committee

The Board Search Committee oversees the election process for Board Directors and President-Elect. It proactively identifies potential candidates, issues an open call for nominations, screens all nominees, compiles a final list of candidates, oversees the election process, and reports on and ensures transparency in these processes.

Board Search Committee for the 2023 elections:

Chair: Winnie Yip

Harvard University

Ama Fenny

University of Ghana

Shiko Maruyama

Jinan University Guangzhou

Manoj Mohanan

Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy

Paul Rodriguez-Lesmes

Universidad del Rosario, Colombia

Capacity Strengthening Committee

The Capacity Strengthening Committee facilitates the IHEA mentoring and fellowship programs, and identifies other activities to meet health economics capacity strengthening needs.

Winnie Yip

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Olufunke Alaba

University of Cape Town

Priya Bhagowalia

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Eleanor Grieve

Glasgow University
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Kazungu Jacob

KEMRI-Wellcome Trust

Adriana König

Technical University of Munich
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Stella Lartey

University of Memphis
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Ann Livingstone

Deakin University
K Merollini

Katharina Merollini

University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland

Paul Rodriguez-Lesmes

Universidad del Rosario
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Bill Weeks

Microsoft

Management team

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Di McIntyre

Executive Director

Di McIntyre

The Executive Director (ED) is appointed by the IHEA Board. The ED works closely with the Board of Directors to develop strategic plans to further the mission of IHEA and her main responsibility is to oversee the implementation of Board-approved plans. She is also responsible for overseeing the day-to-day management of IHEA and for ensuring good governance and financial management of the association.  She is an Emeritus Professor in the Health Economics Unit, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town.

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