Webinar on Financing for Scale-Up
The webinar, Financing the Scale-Up of Family Planning Programs, was held Friday, May 23. The webinar was an interactive session where a panel of four experts on financing for scale-up responded to the moderator’s questions and some from webinar participants.
The four panelists were:
- Monica Kerrigan, Deputy Director of Family Planning with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Johannes Linn, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution
- Allyala Nandakumar, Chief Economist for Global Health at USAID
- Frank Nyonator, Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Health and Allied Sciences in Ghana
Webinar recording
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/529477719
Speaker bios
Monica Kerrigan, Deputy Director, plays a leadership role designing and implementing the Family Planning Strategy, and overseeing grant making and evaluation efforts at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ms. Kerrigan is supporting FP2020 at the global and country level, engaging in new product introduction, and addressing integration issues related to family planning, maternal, newborn and child health, and HIV. Prior to joining the foundation in 2007, she served as the Team Leader, Maternal and Newborn Health, for UNICEF in Indonesia and for more than a decade as a Senior Technical Advisor for Family Planning/Reproductive Health with USAID. Ms. Kerrigan also worked at the Johns Hopkins Program for International Education in Reproductive Health (Jhpiego) where she served as the Director of the Africa office. She has a Master of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Maternal and Child Health Department.
Johannes Linn is a Resident Senior Scholar at the Emerging Markets Forum in Washington, DC, and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He currently serves as the chair for the 10th Replenishment Consultation of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. From 2005-2010, he was Director of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings. Prior to joining Brookings in 2003, he worked for three decades at the World Bank in various capacities, including as the Bank’s Vice President for Financial Policy and Resource Mobilization (1991-1995) and Vice President for Europe and Central Asia (1996-2003). Johannes Linn has published extensively on development and global governance issues, including a book that he co-edited: Getting to Scale: How to Bring Development Solutions to Millions of Poor People (Brookings Press 2013). His current research interests and recent publications are in the areas of aid effectiveness (with a special focus on scaling up successful development interventions), global governance reform, and regional cooperation (with a special focus on Central Asia). Linn holds a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University and a doctorate in economics from Cornell University.
Allyala Nandakumar is the Chief Economist for Global Health at USAID. Dr. Nandakumar also is a Professor of the Practice at Brandeis University where he is the Director of the PhD Program at the Heller School of Social Policy and the Director of the Institute for Global Health and Development. Dr. Nandakumar is an internationally recognized health economist, known specifically for his work in resource tracking, health financing, and healthcare policy and research. His recent research has focused on the fungibility of donor assistance, factors affecting technology adoption in lowand middle-income countries, the linkages between health expenditures and maternal and infant mortality, the relationship between growth in a country’s income and its healthcare spending, and the effect of governance on health outcomes. He has studied the impact of economic transition and its implications for increasing investments in health. A former Indian Administrative Services Officer, his thinking is framed by the importance of governance, driven by the need for greater accountability, arising from limited resources and a growing demand to demonstrate results. After leaving the Indian Administrative Service, Dr. Nandakumar was an Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, a Principal Associate with Abt Associates, a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and a Director with Deloitte Consulting. Dr. Nandakumar has a Master of Science Degree in Mathematics from Bangalore University where he specialized in the General and Special Theory of Relativity and a PhD in Economics from Boston University. Dr. Nandakumar has published extensively in peer reviewed journals and has worked on health financing issues in various countries including Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mongolia, Rwanda, Tonga, Western Samoa, United States, Sudan, Yemen, and Zambia.
Frank Kwadjo Nyonator is a Gro Harlem Brundtland Senior Leadership Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also Dean of the School of Public Health, University of Health and Allied Sciences, in Ghana. Dr. Nyonator was the Ministerial Advisor on Health Systems Strengthening and Director, Human Resource for Health Development, with the Ministry of Health in Ghana. Prior to that, he was the acting Director General of the Ghana Health Service. He had been the Director of Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Division, Volta Regional Director of Health Administration of the Ghana Health Service, and was also Health Systems Advisor for the World Health Organization country office in Abuja, Nigeria from June 2008 to December 2009. He holds a Master of Public Health from Leeds University in the United Kingdom and certificates in financing healthcare in developing countries and health sector reform for primary healthcare from Boston University and the University of Sussex, respectively.