Dean, Chair & Senior Professor,
Faculty of Medicine,University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
MBBS, PhD, FNASSL, FIHASI

Professor Vajira H. W. Dissanayake MBBS (Colombo), PhD (Nottingham), FNASSL (Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka), FIAHSI (Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics) is the Dean of the Faculty and the Chair and Senior Professor in the Department of Anatomy, Genetics, and Biomedical Informatics of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo.
Prof. Dissanayake has held many leadership and advisory positions in the field of medicine in Sri Lanka and globally. He was the President (in 2012) of the Sri Lanka Medical Association. He was also the President (from 2016 to 2019) of the Commonwealth Medical Association. The other leadership positions held by him include President (from 2009 to 2019) of the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka; President (from 2019 to 2020) of the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics; Vice President (from 2019 to 2020) of the International Medical Informatics Association; Board Member since 2010 of the Forum for Ethical Review Committees in Asia and the Western Pacific; Chairperson (since 2022) of the Global Genomic Medicine Collaborative; Founder Chairperson (since 2018) of the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health; Chairperson (since 2021) of the Commonwealth Health Professions and Partners Alliance; a member (since 2016) of the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Health of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London; a member of the Digital Health Guidelines Development Committee of the World Health Organization; a member (from 2019 to 2022) of the roster of experts on Digital Health of the World Health Organization. He is the current President of the Sri Lanka Medical Council and the Registrar of the Ceylon Medical College Council – the organisations that regulate the education and practice of medical, dental, and other health professions in Sri Lanka.
As an academic and a researcher he is a pioneer in Genetics, Genomics, Biomedical and Health Informatics and Bioethics in Sri Lanka. He is a leading researcher in these fields and his own work and that of his team has resulted in more than 170 papers and chapters in peer reviewed national and international journals and books to his credit with an h-index of 22, i10 index of 69, and a citation count of 2392. He has received over LKR. 600 million rupees in local and international grants. He together with his students and colleagues have been the recipient of more than 40 awards for research and innovation at university, national and international levels. He founded the MSc in Biomedical Informatics and MD in Health Informatics programmes leading to Board Certification in Health Informatics, the first programme of its kind anywhere in the world in 2008 in the University of Colombo that has produced over 300 MSc graduate and over 75 MD graduates who are working towards health systems strengthening in various parts of the world. The commonwealth centre for Digital Health that he chairs has been advocating for adoption of digital health around the world with Commonwealth Digital Health Conferences and recognising Digital Innovation, not only in Digital Health, but also other digital technologies that impact social determinants of health such as EduTech, FinTech, NutriTech and EcoTech through the Commonwealth Digital Health Awards. The centre also serves as the technical advisor, together with the World Health Organization, to the Technical Country Support Programme for Digital Health Maturity of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
In recognition of his scientific achievements he was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka in 2013 – the youngest fellow of the Academy at that time and a fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics in 2020 – the first Sri Lankan fellow of the Academy. He was conferred the Sri Lankan national titular honour of Vidya Jyothi in 2019 by His Excellency the President on the recommendation of the Sri Lanka Medical Association.

Acting Chief Scientist & Director,
Global Primary Health Care Program (Better Care)
Professor,
Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney
MBBS (hons) MIPH PhD FRACGP FARGP

David is Acting Chief Scientist and Director of the Global Primary Health Care Program (Better Care). He is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney and works clinically as a GP in Sydney.
David joined the Institute in 2006 and leads the Better care program at the Institute. This program focusses on SDG 3 – especially SDGs 3.4 and 3.8. The goal is to overcome the challenges of delivering affordable, high-quality health services and programs to communities across the globe. It is underpinned by health systems science, a dynamic and emerging discipline that includes health services research, health policy and systems research and implementation science.
David has published extensively in areas related to health systems research and leads several grants testing innovative strategies to improve access to high-quality primary health care with a particular focus on under-served populations. He was the 2015-2016 Australian Harkness Fellow in Healthcare policy, based at Harvard School of Public Health where he conducted a national study of the changes to health care delivery systems associated with President Obama’s reforms.
He has been a board member with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners National Faculty of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and sits on several government, non-government and research advisory committees. He was the elected co-chair of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases committee for hypertension control from 2012 to 2015.

Director,
Global Healthier Societies Program, George Institute for Global Health
Professor,
School of Public Health, Imperial College London

Kent is a political-economist with research interests in health policy analysis and the evidence to policy pathway.
Kent joined the Institute in 2020 to lead the newly established Healthier Societies program. The program aims to support governments, markets and communities to establish and deliver favourable conditions to enable the health and wellbeing of people, planet and economies – and to fix systems not people, as Kent has argued. It does so through cutting-edge research, evaluation, policy development and knowledge co-creation with communities, policy makers and within markets. It also delivers knowledge to support advocacy and accountability mechanisms. The Program focusses mainly on the social and structural determinants of health, with research teams covering food policy, injury prevention, mental health, commercial determinants of health, planetary health, health equity, health and human rights, community engagement and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health.
Kent has published widely on global health governance and architecture, health policy, planning and financing, population level approaches to control of NCDs, HIV and sexual and reproductive health, health and human rights, as well as on equity, inclusion, and accountability. He authored the leading graduate textbook ‘Making Health Policy’ (3rd edition available here). He served as Chief of Policy, Strategy and Research at UNAIDS for over ten years and is the co-founder and co-director of Global Health 50/50, the world’s leading authority on gender in global health. Kent also serves on the Policy Committee of the World Obesity Federation and WHO’s informal expert committee on the Commercial Determinants of Health.

Senior Research Fellow
PhD

Dr. Laura Downey is a senior research fellow in health economics and policy at the George Institute for Global health, a conjoint senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales Australia, and an advanced research fellow at Imperial College London. Laura works within the Centre for Health Systems Science, where her research is focused broadly on evaluating health system performance in relation to Universal Health Coverage goals, and developing innovative solutions to support equitable access to high quality, affordable care for the world’s most vulnerable populations.
Previously, Laura was a technical advisor in global health at the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI), where she worked with governments in low and middle income countries (LMICs) to support improvements in evidence-based health policy in relation to value for money of healthcare investment and quality of care delivery. She has held research and policy positions at the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE), University College London (UCL), and the University of New South Wales, Australia.
She has been closely involved in numerous health system reforms in India between 2015 and 2020, and remains a health policy mentor for the Indian Council of Medical Research. She has worked with country partners across Asia, Africa, and Europe in partnership with global institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Bank.

Senior Lecturer
Department of Community Medicine,
Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo
MBBS, MSc(Community Medicine), MD(Community Medicine)

Dr. Dulani Samaranayake is a lecturer in the Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo. She graduated from the University of Colombo in 2001 with second Class Upper Honours.
Her research interests include Occupational Health, Human Resources for Health and Environmental Health

Head of Health Economics & Process Evaluation Program Co-Director,
Health System Science
Professor of Health Economics,
Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney

Prof Stephen Jan is Co-Director of Health Systems Science at the George Institute for Global Health, Conjoint Professor of Health Economics at the University of New South Wales, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. He is a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Health Economics Policy Innovation at the Business School, Imperial College London and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Public and International Affairs, City University of Hong Kong.
His areas of expertise are economic evaluation, health financing, health sector priority setting, Indigenous and global health issues. He was a member of the Lancet Taskforce on Non-Communicable Diseases and Economics. He has worked with governments, both in Australia and overseas, and with international agencies such as the WHO and industry.
He has a strong interest in training and organisational capacity building in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and has been involved in projects in China (COACH) and India to investigate the translation of HTA evidence into government decision making.

Program Director,
Healthier Societies
PhD

Devaki Nambiar is Program Director, Healthier Societies Strategy at the George Institute for Global Health India with appointments at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India, the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, USA.
She is a Health Policy and Systems Researcher (HPSRer) with over two decades of experience working in India and other Low- and Middle-Income Countries on decision-maker demand-driven research, postgraduate teaching in HPSR, as well as technical assistance with an emphasis on community action for health, social exclusion, health equity and health for all. She is a former Fulbright, Fogarty, and NIH scholar, and Fellow of the Wellcome Trust/Department of Biotechnology India Alliance. She advises the WHO on health inequality monitoring, national programme re-orientation, and guideline development to leave no one behind.
She serves on the Lancet-Chatham House Commission on Improving Population Health post COVID-19, the Lancet Commission on Sustainable Healthcare, and advises Lancet Commissions on Women and Cancer as well as on Reimagining India’s Health System. She is a member of the People’s Health Movement and the Medico Friends Circle. She also serves on the Board of Health Systems Global and the Research Advisory Board of the Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, India. Dr. Nambiar received her doctorate in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2009 and is a recipient of an Emerging Leader Award from the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.

Program Director,
Primary Health Care Program (Better Care)
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney
Professor, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India
MBBS, MD, PhD

Dr. Praveen is the Program Director of Better Care Strategy (Primary Health Care) at the George Institute for Global Health India where he has been working since 2009, including his previous roles of Program Head and Senior Research Fellow. He also holds academic appointments as Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, Australia; Professor at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India.
Dr. Praveen is a public health specialist with thorough knowledge of epidemiological study designs and public health research projects. His experience relates to planning and managing large scale public health research projects and surveys, with a research focus on systems-based innovations using digital technology related to chronic diseases. Dr Praveen uses mixed methods research and implementation sciences approaches to implement well established evidence into routine practices.
Dr. Praveen has led collaborative research projects in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda, South Africa, Mexico, and Thailand. He has led the implementation of a range of projects in the field of cardiovascular and chronic disease management. He is the co-chair of the hypertension research program of the Global Alliance of Chronic Diseases. He is a founding member and Director of the Gates Foundation funded Global Primary Health Care Consortium (https://phcrc.world/) –comprised of seven health systems research groups internationally. He is the Director of the NIHR funded Global Health Research Center on NCDs and Environmental changes that involves collaborators from India, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Senior Lecturer (Health Informatics),
Head.
Department of Medical Technology.
Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo
MBBS, MSc, PhD, Dip (Diplomacy & IR), MIEEE

Roshan Hewapathirana is a Senior Lecturer in Health Informatic and the head of the department in the Department of Medical Technology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He received the MBBS degree from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, and obtained MSc in Information Technology from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and PhD , from the Department of Informatics, Faulty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo, Norway. His PhD thesis focused on open source as a platform ecosystem in the healthcare domain in low and middle income country context.

Roshan is a visiting lecturer in health informatics and the member of the Specialty Board in Biomedical Informatics in Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is a Fellow of the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health (CwCDH) and a member of the working council of Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN). Roshan is an advisor to the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka on digital health policy, standards, and interoperability in a voluntary basis. He together with his colleagues have been the recipient of several national and international awards such as eSwabhimani Award, mBillionth Award and World Summit Award for research and innovation in the field of health and medical informatics. He has also secured several patents and published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has also supervised more than 50 MSc and more than 15 MD (equivalent to PhD) students in health and medical informatics.

Prior to joining the academic community, he served as a senior software engineer in Lanka Software Foundation for the Sahana open source disaster management system project. Roshan has more than 10 years of experience in working in the capacity of a consultant in health information system implementation and M&E under international development partners such as UNICEF, IOM, WHO, USAID, ADB and GF ATM in Iran, Nepal, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste. He is a implementer and a trainer for the open source public health information system tool District Health Information System (DHIS2). He is a member of the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Technical Assistance pool of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GF ATM). He was also a member of the roster of experts on Digital Health of the World Health Organization (2919 – 2022). He is also a key resource person in CwCDH Digital Health Maturity Assessment tool.

Senior Research Fellow,
Health Systems Science,
Adjunct Senior Lecturer,
Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney

Gill is a mixed methods health systems researcher and evaluation specialist with over 15 years of experience in global health research and evaluation. She has country experience in numerous countries in both Africa and the Asia Pacific region. She leads and conducts independent evaluations of large-scale programs and provides evidence-based advice and analysis to global and national health agencies. She has conducted this work for bilateral development agencies, private foundations, major NGOs, government departments and ministries of health. She has a strong commitment to helping stakeholders at all levels to identify and use the most appropriate evidence to improve the design and implementation of health programs for better health outcomes. Gill has previously held academic appointments at the University College London, the University of Cape Town, and Charles Darwin University. She is currently a health systems senior researcher at the George Institute for Global Health, and holds an adjunct academic appointment at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Head & Chair,
Department of Community Medicine, University of Colombo
MBBS, MSc, MD, PhD

Professor Upul Senarath is the Chair Professor of Community Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo. Professor Senarath has held many posts at the University of Colombo: He served as the Chairperson of the Community Stream from 2015-2019, during which time he gave leadership for the public health teaching programme of the undergraduate curriculum. He played a pivotal role in the design and implementation of rural health research programme under the HETC project, which resulted in a rural health research centre in Kataragama. has served as a technical advisor to the Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank and several other agencies.
Professor Senarath has over 85 peer-reviewed publications in journals. His research interests include public health nutrition, maternal and child health, cardiovascular epidemiology, reproductive health, and health systems research. Professor Senarath was awarded PhD in January 2021 for his doctoral thesis on the effects of a mHealth nutrition and lifestyle intervention in reducing cardiovascular disease risk in overweight or obese adults. He won the University of Colombo award for excellence in research in 2011 and has received several presidential awards for scientific publication, Australian Leadership Awards and SUSRED award in 2017.

Senior Lecturer,
University of Colombo
MBBS, MSc, MD

Dr. Yasaswi Walpita is a Board-certified specialist in Public health in Sri Lanka and a Senior lecturer, in the Department of Community Medicine, University of Colombo. She has served in the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka in central institutions of public health including Epidemiology Unit, Medical Research Institute and Environmental and Occupational health Directorate in the capacity of policy and programme planning and implementation. Currently she is teaching health policy and programme planning, research methods, epidemiology and environmental and occupational health at undergraduate and postgraduate level. She is the Academic Director for Health Development and Research programme at Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo.
Dr. Walpita has worked as a module lead for Global Health at the MPH programme at Cardiff University, UK and also worked as an honorary team member of Welsh Health impact Assessment Unit, Public Health Wales, UK. She has conducted comparative analysis on the Welsh and Sri Lankan health systems in terms of capacity for health impact analysis. She also has contributed as an investigator and a technical consultant for number of projects related to health systems and policy reviews in Sri Lanka and SEARO region including Review of the policies on promotion of nutrition and physical activity in school settings in Sri Lanka, Review of National NCD programme in Sri Lanka, A review of Country actions to change food environment to promote healthy diets in SEARO countries etc on behalf of Ministry of Health Sri Lanka and UN agencies including WHO, UNICEF and WFP. Her research interests include health systems, environmental and occupational health and nutrition.