The Alliance is pleased to announce that Professor David Peters, chair of the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has taken over from John-Arne Røttingen as the new chair of its Board.
David Peters has served on the Alliance Board for the last three years and has collaborated with the Alliance in editing the last Flagship Report on Essential Medicines and on the Implementation Research Guide. He is a specialist in international health systems who has worked as a researcher, policy advisor, educator, bureaucrat, manager and clinician in numerous developing countries over the last two decades. He has served on other advisory boards, including those for GAVI, the Global Fund, USAID and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Population and Public Health, and co-leads the Thematic Working Group on Teaching and Learning Health Policy and Systems Research for Health Systems Global.
As Senior Public Health Specialist for the World Bank, David pioneered the development of the Sector Wide Approaches (SWAps) in health, with the purpose of improving national leadership and coherence over health strategies, and improving coordination and accountability of policy implementation. In India, he led a research programme that included local researchers, government and civil society, in examining health systems and inequities, and which was used as a basis for new policies and major programmes to improve access and financing for health, including the Rural Health Mission. He created the first national Balanced Scorecard to assess and manage health services (in Afghanistan) and conducted research that directly led to the ending of user fees in primary care facilities.
He has been Research Director for the Future Health Systems research consortium, which is working to improve access, affordability and quality of health services for the poor, with field sites in five countries in Africa and Asia. He is currently leading a programme to strengthen public health systems in Liberia in the wake of the Ebola epidemic. He has written seven books and over 100 scientific articles, mostly focusing on health systems in low- and middle-income countries. His teaching and research focus on the performance of health systems, implementation research methods, incorporating complexity models and addressing issues related to poverty and health systems, innovations in organization, technology and financing of health systems, the role of the private sector, human resource management, and ways to use donor assistance to strengthen local capacity in low-income countries.
David’s experience and interests in building the field of health policy and systems research place him in a good position to chair the Alliance Board, and we look forward to his leadership and participation in the Alliance’s work in the coming years.