Seminar @ UCL

As part of our MSc in Health Economics and Decision Science programme, we have a very exciting seminar to open up the academic year — incidentally, we now have 32 students enrolled in our second year. That’s a 50% increase in comparison to last year so we’re very happy about it!

Anyway, the Health Economics and Decision Science Seminar will be held on 5 October 2018, in Room 804, 2-3pm, at the Institute of Education building — see on the map below; the full address is Bedford Way (20).

Here are a few more details.

Topic: Health Financing for Universal Health Coverage

Speaker: Dr Virginia Wiseman (University of New South Wales, and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

Virginia has worked as a health economist for the past 21 years. In 2001, she joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) where she has led several evaluations of malaria interventions in East and West Africa. She is now based in Sydney, at the Kirby Institute for Infectious Diseases at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and splits her time between LSHTM and UNSW. Her current research programme focuses on the Asia-Pacific and addresses two broad topics. The first is the integration and scale-up of new technologies, particularly point of care tests for malaria, TB, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections into resource-constrained health systems. She also leads the recently funded PINTAR study, which seeks to design and evaluate interventions to improve the dispensing of antibiotics by private drug sellers in Indonesia. The other area of research is measurement of equity in health systems financing. Her studies in Fiji, Timor-Leste, Cambodia and Indonesia are informing policies to support universal health coverage in these countries. Virginia currently holds a research Fellowship from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

I don’t know her personally, but am told that Virginia is an excellent speaker — and it sounds like a certainly topical talk!