Our collective

Global Health 50/50 (GH5050) aims to bridge evidence and policy change through a unique model that brings together a collective of researchers, strategists, communicators, and advocates, alongside an advisory council of influential champions and policy makers.

GH5050 is largely staffed by volunteers affiliated with other organisations. These include: University College London, UNAIDS and the Embassy of Sweden in Lusaka). To limit the potential for conflicts of interest, collective members affiliated with organisations reviewed by GH5050 (i.e. UNAIDS and SIDA) are not engaged in reviewing or coding any institutional policies.

GH5050 is funded by the Wellcome Trust and an anonymous philanthropist.

Prof. Sarah Hawkes

Co-Founder and Director

Co-Founder and Director

Sarah Hawkes is a medical doctor with a degree in sociology and a PhD in epidemiology. She is Director of the Centre for Gender and Global Health and Professor of Global Public Health at University College London where she leads a research theme analyzing the use of evidence in policy processes, particularly in relation to gender and health, and sexual health. She has lived and worked for much of the past 20 years in Asia, where she has gathered evidence, built capacity and helped develop policy for programmes focusing on gender, sexual health and human rights. She works closely with national governments, research organizations, WHO and UNFPA in Asia and the Middle East.

Dr. Kent Buse

UNAIDS Team Representative

UNAIDS Team Representative

Kent is a policy analyst who taught at Yale University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has co-authored/edited 5 books and over 100 articles, including on gender and global health. He has worked for a range of institutions in numerous countries spanning Africa, Asia, North America and the Pacific. Kent is a champion for social justice, human rights and the democratization of opportunity for all. He loves to cook and is Chief of Strategic Policy Directions at UNAIDS, where he also provides support to GH5050.

Mikaela Hildebrand

Strategic directions and impact

Strategic directions and impact

Mikaela is a strategist, organizer and HIV/SRHR policy specialist with over ten years experience in developing global partnerships, such as ‘All In to end adolescent AIDS’ and ‘ACT2015’ as well as corporate strategies to influence policy process, including Agenda 2030. She has coordinated large scale qualitative and epidemiological research projects in Southern Africa, as well as managed communications and social media for advocacy, community building and accountability. As an advocate, she has worked to reform Swedish harm-reduction policy, by among other things co-editing the book Dogmer som Dödar/Deadly Dogma (2017), as well as to strengthen Sweden’s global health commitments. She has worked for the UN, civil society and government, with a 360 understanding of different actors and positions. Mikaela is currently an advisor at Sida’s regional SRHR team at the Swedish Embassy in Zambia. She holds an MSc in human rights from Gothenburg University.

Sonja Tanaka

Coordinator

Coordinator

Sonja Tanaka is an expert in global health policy and strategy. Her work focuses on articulating organizational policy positions, strategies and engagement in global governance processes. She played a key role in the development of UNAIDS global strategies, UNAIDS contributions to the 2011 and 2016 UN General Assembly Political Declarations on AIDS and its positions in Agenda 2030. Sonja has extensive experience in delivering coherent, high-level products derived through complex, multistakeholder processes. She holds a Masters in Public Health and pursues creative solutions to communications in global health. She is currently an independent consultant and lives in Paris with her partner and two young sons in whom she hopes to instill belief in the power and imperative of gender equality.

Anna Purdie

Project Manager

Project Manager

Anna works in the UCL Institute for Global Health and is part of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health. She holds an MSc in Anthropology and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and an BA in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. Prior to this, she spent time working for UNAIDS in Geneva and as a Community Outreach Volunteer at Positive East, a community-based HIV charity in London.

Ruth Lawlor

Researcher

Researcher

Ruth Lawlor is a PhD candidate in history at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on conflict-related sexual violence and is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Cambridge Trust, and the Robert Gardiner Memorial Fund. She is an editor at U.S. Studies Online, the postgraduate journal of the British Association for American Studies.

Tiantian Chen

Researcher

Researcher

Tiantian is a PhD student at Department of Sociology in University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on human-assisted reproduction technology policies in China. Before enrolling in University of Cambridge, she completed her B.A at Peking University and Johns Hopkins University. While completing her PhD study, she also operates a company in the UK which transfers shipping containers into affordable and habitable social houses. She plans to work on reproductive health issues after she returns to China where women are still facing problems such as lack of sex education and high abortion rate.

Elias Nosrati

Researcher

Researcher

Elias Nosrati is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. Through the analytic lens offered by the political economy of public health, his research focuses on the upstream determinants of pathogenesis and health inequality. In collaboration with Professor Sarah Hawkes, he is currently examining the origins, causes and mutations of the gender life expectancy gap, with a focus on its social, political and corporate determinants.

Charlotte Brown

Communications lead

Communications lead

Charlotte is a part-time MSc student at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a graduate of the University of Cambridge. She has spent three years working on issues relating to global health and development and has field experience in both Uganda and India. Whilst at the World Health Organisation in Geneva she worked on the UN 4th Global Road Safety Campaign and is co-author on a number of upcoming papers. Since joining GH5050 she has managed the social media including for the launch of the inaugural report and Celebrating Change campaign and now leads communications for Global Health 5050.

Emily Blitz

Event Coordinator

Event Coordinator

Emily T. Blitz is a conference director with twenty years of experience in public relations, multicultural team leadership and stakeholder engagement. She has intimate knowledge of all programmatic and logistical aspects involved with implementing conferences and events for 25 to 25,000 participants. At home in an international environment, her specialties include project management, event communications including social media, presentation skills, protocol, VIP and IPP handling, committee governance, programme development, and stakeholder and donor support. Emily is passionate about health and development issues, particularly HIV, vaccines, sustainable agriculture, LGBTI issues, women's rights, safe motherhood and children's health.

Clara Affun-Adegbulu

Researcher

Researcher

Clara works as a researcher at the international health policy unit of the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. Prior to this, she practised as a nurse in Bangladesh, England, France and Belgium, spending most of her nursing career in psychiatry. Having made the decision to go back to academia in 2016, she has since worked on health systems strengthening in fragile and conflict-affected settings, outbreak research and gender, power, intersectionality and sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings. She has just finished her Masters in public health from the Medical University of Vienna/University of Vienna and is hoping to continue her studies with a PhD.

Mireille Evagora-Campbell

Researcher

Researcher

Mireille has previously worked for UNAIDS, WHO and Cancer Research UK where she focussed on areas including women, child and adolescent health and the right to health. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Here, Mireille was actively involved in gender equality both within the university, helping to run sexual harassment training for new students, and beyond, through involvement with Amnesty International and UNICEF campaigns.

Laure-Anais Zultak

Researcher

Researcher

Laure has been working in global health policy and advocacy for several years and currently works as a political consultant for the healthcare sector. She previously worked on various projects at Chatham House's Centre on Global Health Security, think tank Polygeia and sexual health charity MEDFASH. Laure holds a BA in Chinese studies from the University of Oxford and an MSc Population and Development from the London School of Economics.

Arjee Restar

Researcher

Researcher

Arjee is a PhD Candidate at Brown University, and an MPH graduate of Columbia University. Her work focuses on understanding structural and social-based interventions for transgender women and gender nonconforming communities in the U.S. and in the South-East Asia region. Arjee is passionate about health policy, sexual health promotion, community mobilization, and gender and racial equity.

Mairi Jeffery

Researcher

Researcher

Mairi obtained an MSc in Global Health and Development at UCL in 2017, writing her dissertation on gender differences in the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease, and whether gender inequality could play a role. She completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology with social policy in 2015, having studied research methods and international perspectives on gender. She recently finished a placement with the health team at the Commonwealth Secretariat, and before that she worked as an independent consultant for the Global Health and Development Group at Imperial College, to help in the creation of an online Toolkit for information on Health Technology Assessment.

Artricia Rasyid

Researcher

Researcher

Artricia is a Senior Policy Analyst to the Chief of Staff for the Governor of Jakarta, where she is a part of the Gubernatorial Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight. She dual majored in anthropology and comparative literature at New York University and obtained her Master's in Social Anthropology (Medical track) at the University of Cambridge. She is interested in learning more about quantifying the sociocultural determinants of global health inequalities.

Geordan Shannon

Researcher

Researcher

Dr Geordan Shannon is a feminist, medical doctor, and global health academic. She is based at the Institute for Global Health, University College London, where she leads research in health systems innovation, gender-based violence prevention, participatory research, public engagement, and health economics. She has worked in various settings, including remote Indigenous Australia, post-Tsunami Sri Lanka, the Peruvian Amazon, Western Kenya and rural Sierra Leone. Geordan is the co-founder of Global Health Disrupted (www.globalhealthdisrupted.org), a grassroots network supporting creative approaches to improving health and strengthening communities around the world. She was recently awarded Young Australian of the Year in the UK in recognition of her contributions to global health.

Rebekah Merriman

Researcher

Researcher

Rebekah is currently a junior doctor working in central London, after having recently graduated from King’s College London. At university, along side her medical degree, she obtained a BSc in Medical Ethics and Law, and wrote a dissertation which considered gendered public health messages in national screening programmes. She was a widening participation ambassador, and was also part of a team that implemented an anti-sexual harassment campaign on campus. She has a long standing interest in gender equality and gender as a social determinant of health and hopes to pursue this further alongside her clinical career.

Ashley Sheffel

Data analyst

Data analyst

Ashley Sheffel is a public health practitioner and researcher with expertise in global health

monitoring and evaluation. Her interests center around methods for monitoring health systems

and capacity building for implementing evaluation methods at the country level. Ashley played

a key role in the development of the WHO Service Availability and Readiness health facility

assessment and has provided technical assistance to numerous countries in Africa and South

East Asia implementing health facility assessments and reviews of routine health system data

quality. She has extensive experience in qualitative and quantitative study design,

implementation, and analysis, as well as informing evidence-based policymaking. She holds a

Doctor of Public Health in International Health from Johns Hopkins University and is currently

an independent consultant based in Baltimore, Maryland.