Brown Bag Seminar: The Lancet Commission on a Citizen-Centered Health System for India: Reform pathways towards UHC for a fifth of the world’s population
Anuska Kalita, DrPH, is director of the India Health Systems Program in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard TH. Chan School of Public Health. She is a health systems specialist with over 20 years of experience across academia, management consulting, multilateral agencies, and philanthropy. Her work spans 18 countries across Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe, with a particular focus on India. She has led large-scale health systems and policy research and built cross-sector partnerships that align government, private sector, academic, and civil society actors around actionable reform agendas. She co-led The Lancet Commission on a Citizen-Centered Health System for India (2026) and has contributed to the design of landmark policies including India’s National Health Policy (2017), the Ayushman Bharat program (2018), and the national ASHA Program (2005). She has led and designed several capacity-strengthening/executive training programs for senior health professionals and policy makers, notably the WHO Academy’s PHC Leadership Course for senior policy actors across 180 countries. Kalita holds a doctorate in public health from Harvard University.
Vikram Patel, MBBS, PhD, is Paul Farmer Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He holds honorary professorships at Harvard Chan School, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Public Health Foundation of India. Patel co-leads the Mental Health for All lab and GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard initiative, and his research focuses on the global burden of mental health problems, their links to social disadvantages, and community-based solutions. He cofounded Sangath, an Indian NGO recognized with international awards, and several global mental health networks. A Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and member of the US National Academy of Medicine, Patel has served on India’s first National Mental Health Policy Committee, co-led two Lancet Commissions on mental health, and received major honors, including the Rhodes Scholarship, Sarnat Prize, Pardes Humanitarian Prize, an Honorary OBE, and the Canada Gairdner Award. He holds multiple honorary doctorates and was named to TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in 2015.
Speaker Information
Anuska Kalita
Organizers
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