Health and wellbeing
Our focus area leader, Megha Rao has more than five years of research experience focusing on health system governance and financing for efficient and effective healthcare delivery.
Megha Rao joined CHE in July 2023 as a Research Fellow for the Thanzi Labwino (Better Health) project and is part of the Global Health team. Her research interests include impact and economic evaluations of health policies in low and middle-income countries.
Research highlights
Thanzi la Onse: Health of all
Thanzi la Onse’s (Health of All) core objective is to improve population health and reduce health inequities in Malawi, Uganda and Southern and East Africa.
Vaccine targets for animal African trypanosomiasis
Translating the protective effects of antibodies to invariant T. vivax antigens from mouse to cattle
Current projects
We're undertaking a variety of work in the health and wellbeing sector. Here are the projects we're currently working on.
Thanzi La Mawa (Health of tomorrow)
Funded by the Wellcome Trust, this project involved an integrated analysis of health system capabilities and effects on population health in Malawi and Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa.
Ultimately, the project aims to build a detailed and theoretically principled simulation model that will couple a 'Healthcare Production Module' with an agent-based 'Epidemiological Module' to result in health gains.
This program is exploring how the currently available resources (budgets and non-financial resources) for health can be used to generate the greatest health gains. How can greater gains be achieved with more financial resources? How should the healthcare system adapt in response to the evolving burdens of diseases?
Thanzi Labwino (Better Health)
Developing the tools and evidence needed to address neglected tropical diseases in East and Southern Africa.
Thanzi Labwino (TLab) will contribute towards the broader ambition of the Thanzi la Onse (Health of All) research programme, to improve population health and reduce health inequalities in East and West Africa by supporting cost-effective and equitable investments in disease elimination.
TLab is creating:
- Novel, robust and relevant health economic evidence generated on investments in disease elimination
- Stronger partnerships established between academic, policy, and community stakeholders to c-learn, inform and disseminate new knowledge on disease elimination
- Improved capability to generate, interpret and use health economic evidence to inform their disease elimination and resource allocation decisions.
HIV and wider health service integration in Eswatini
This project aims to:
- determine which non-HIV health services would be efficient to co-deliver with HIV care
- determine which services to include in eSwatini’s health benefit package to maximise population health under resource constraints
- assess trade-offs between service efficiency vs resilience to exogenous shocks
The research team combines expertise in modelling, health economics, implementation science, and eSwatini’s health sector (including the Director of Planning for MoH).
University of York-led global health economics network
Created in collaboration with the New York University School of Medicine; ECSA Health Community; University of Eswatini; Ministry of Health (Eswatini); and the University of York. This global health economics network is for furthering research, capability building and policy.
The network aims to:
- continue the Thanzi Programme focus on Africa (ECSA and WAHO regions), plus pan-continental engagement by continuing discussions with the African Union /NEPAD
- build interest, initiate, and expand activities in the COMISCA region;
- explore and seek funding opportunities for activities in SIDS, other world regions (South Asia, MENA, and BRICS) and with populations in humanitarian need
Modelling to Inform HIV Programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa (MIHPSA)
Funded by the Gates Foundation, the overarching aim of the proposed collaboration is to pool insights from multiple models with close engagement from stakeholders to inform the future design of country HIV programmes in African countries, with Malawi, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as particular examples.
This will move towards the alignment of thinking of multiple stakeholders on future programme design and enhance the use of modelling to inform such design.
For further information on the Thanzi Programme, please contact our project manager, Alex Rollinger (alex.rollinger@york.ac.uk).
For research enquiries, please contact: info@thanzi.org or visit the Thanzi website.