Public Health Foundation of India

Dr. Lipika Nanda has a unique blend of strong managerial experience along with technical expertise primarily in health systems strengthening in India for the last 18 years. She brings in international expertise with a Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard University, USA and subsequently a doctorate in Health Systems Management. She also has an MPhil in Human Development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has been a technical adviser to the WHO for several years. Her experience spans the gamut of the Indian Government, US Government and British Government as well as local and international NGOs and Universities. She currently heads the Public Health Foundation of India’s program in Odisha as the Director of the Regional Institute – The Indian Institute of Public Health Bhubaneswar providing leadership oversight to several public health programs being implemented by IIPHB in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. These programs include technical assistance to Ministry of Health, Government of Odisha and Chhattisgarh in implementing a health sector programs. Prior to this, she was a senior Director and Global HSS adviser to FHI 360, an International Public Health Organization and led on several health sector reforms programs in AP, MP and India. Prior to that assignment she was a Health Policy Adviser with DFID and has led the design of health sector reform programs in Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. She was also a member of the design team within DFID that introduced ASHA within the RCH II programs. Her specific strengths are around HR and Governance issues that plague the functioning of the health delivery systems. She has worked within the government systems to design and implement community based health programs that involve community health workers and currently implemented as a flagship program of the Government of AP. She has led on the evaluation of several health programs and schemes of the Government of India, as a health policy adviser within DFID. She has also been principal investigator to several health policy research projects like Burden of Disease studies and the World health Surveys (WHO). Her multidisciplinary background in Psychology, Human Development and Public Health provides her a unique opportunity to her to be able to design, implement and evaluate health systems strengthening initiatives, especially in the developing world. Currently, one of the areas of work that she is specifically working on is around Climate Change and its impact on health.