Steering Committee

Bob Mash

Bob Mash chairs the Steering Committee and is a Professor of Family Medicine and Primary Care at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and co-ordinator of the PRIMAFAMED network in sub-Saharan Africa. He is an established primary care researcher in the African context with over 190 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals and am a leading researcher in Africa in the field of family medicine. He has helped to establish the discipline of family medicine in South Africa and subsequently in many other countries across sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Malawi). He is committed to the development of community-orientated primary care, primary health care and district health services in the region.

Wolfgang Munar

Wolfgang Munar is an Associate Professor in Global Health Systems at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. He serves as the Program Director for the Global Health DrPH program. A graduate of Harvard University’s School of Public Health and Universidad del Norte’s School of Medicine, Professor Munar has been engaged in global health practice and research in maternal neonatal and child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and Tuberculosis in Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and South Asia. Since 2009, he has become involved in health systems research particularly in the area of performance improvement in primary healthcare systems in low- and middle income countries. His research is focused on characterizing the causal mechanisms and contextual factors that explain the performance of primary care systems of low- and middle-income countries. Currently, he maintains an active global health research program in India, Honduras, El Salvador, and Kenya. Dr. Munar has served on several global health advisory committees and boards. He currently serves in the Technical Review Panel of the Global Fund as an expert in Strategic Investment and Sustainable Finance.

David Peiris

David Peiris is the Director of the Global Primary Health Care Program (Better Care) and Co-Director of the Centre for Health Systems Science. He is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, UNSW Sydney and works clinically as a GP in Sydney. 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.

K.M. Saif-Ur-Rahman

K.M. Saif-Ur-Rahman is an Assistant Scientist at icddr,b, and working on health systems research and evidence synthesis. He has got experience in both infectious diseases and chronic disease research in resource-poor settings. As an evidence synthesis specialist, he has led different projects on public health and health systems incorporating diverse methodologies such as systematic review, scoping review, rapid review, and evidence gap map (EGM).
He is a review author in Cochrane Infectious Diseases and representing icddr,b at the Global Evidence Synthesis Initiative (GESI) as well. Dr Rahman is undertaking his PhD at the Department of Public Health and Health Systems, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University.

Felicity Goodyear-Smith

Felicity Goodyear-Smith is a professor of general practice and primary health care at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She has been involved in a number of international projects on aspects of primary health care research, including leading two Ariadne Lab-funded identification of knowledge gaps in the organisation and financing of primary health care in low- and middle-income countries. She has also been involved in primary care research capacity-building, including running workshops on scientific writing and publishing, in a number of countries including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea, Japan.
She has co-edited two books on this topic: International Perspectives of Primary Care Research, and How to Do Primary Care Research, and contributed to the AfriWon Research Collaboration online research training course resulting from the latter publication She was Chair of the International Committee of NAPCRG, and is the current Chair of the WONCA Working Party on Research.

Lisa Hirschhorn

Lisa Hirschhorn is a Professor of Medical Social Science and Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Senior Director for Implementation and Improvement Science at Last Mile Health. Trained in medicine and HIV, Dr Hirschhorn is an expert in implementation research and improvement science. She has served in leadership positions in a number of initiatives including as commissioner for the Lancet Global Health Commission on high quality health systems and consultant to WHO in work to measure and improve quality in fragile and conflict settings. Current work includes work with PHCPI with the team at Ariadne and supporting innovation and learning with the MOMENTUM USAID work, supporting work to advise Liberia in effective and safe approaches to leverage CHW to respond to the COVID pandemic while sustaining PHC, and evaluating models able to sustain quality primary care during COVID response and exploring equity in the response and impact.

Fadi El-Jardali

Fadi El-Jardali is a Professor of Health Systems and Policy, Chair of the Health Management and Policy Department, Founder & Director of the Knowledge to Policy (K2P) Center; Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice; Co-Director of the Center for Systematic Reviews in Health Policy and Systems Research (SPARK); and co-lead for the Global Evidence Synthesis Initiative (GESI) Secretariat at the American University of Beirut. He is part-time Professor at McMaster University in Canada. He is also the Co-Editor in Chief for Health Research, Policy and Systems (HARPS) Journal. He is a recognized senior expert with extensive international and regional experience and multidisciplinary background in health policy, systems and management. He held several senior management and policy positions in public and private sector.