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.

A few of our core staff members are funded to work on GH5050 part-time. However, 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.

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.

Charlotte Brown

Communications lead

Communications lead

Charlotte is an incoming PhD 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. She leads communications for Global Health 50/50.

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.

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.

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.

Ilaria Galizia

Researcher

Researcher

Ilaria completed a degree in Medicine and Surgery and specialised in General Adult Psychiatry. She also obtained a Master’s degree in Gender Studies and Politics, writing a dissertation about the impact of gender as a risk factor for depression. She worked as a visiting researcher at the Psychological Medicine Department of King’s College London, collaborating with Cochrane Collaboration. As a clinician, she gained experience working at Mental Health Services in Italy. During her clinical activity, she always keeps a gender and intersectional approach. She has a very keen interest in investigating the impact of gender on mental health, and is currently working on the GH5050 journal review.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kristine Onarheim

Researcher

Researcher

Kristine Husøy Onarheim is a medical doctor and a research fellow in health policy at the Institute for Global Health. She works on the SELMA project, which aims to study public policy responses to improve the sexual and reproductive health of migrants and refugees. In her PhD, Onarheim explored priority setting and intra-household resource allocation for newborn health in Ethiopia (University of Bergen, Norway). Her wide-ranging research on priority setting in global health include work on women’s health, children’s health, universal health coverage, migrant health, access to medicines, and governance. She has been a visiting researcher at Harvard University. As a medical doctor, she has clinical experience from Norway, Ethiopia and India. Onarheim was a founding member of the Lancet Youth Commission on Essential Medicines Policies and an intern at the WHO. She is also an associated researcher at Global Health Priorities, University of Bergen.

Emmanuel Otache

Designer

Designer

Emmanuel Otache is a brand communication consultant who has worked with UNICEF, UNFPA, UNHCR and key development agencies in Nigeria with key involvement in campaigns such as End Female Genital Mutilation, Gender Analysis of the Capital Projects in the Nigerian Budget, case studies of Violence Against Women and Girls in Northern Nigeria, Communication for Development Interventions to Address Gender Barrier in MNCH Services uptake in selected Nigeria states. With over 12 years in brand communication, he specialises in motion graphics, graphic designs, UX/UI Design and brand strategy.

Anna Purdie

Programme Manager

Programme Manager

Anna works in the UCL Institute for Global Health and is part of the UCL Centre for Gender and Global Health working on gender, NCDs and public engagement. 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.

Geordan Shannon

Researcher

Researcher

Dr Geordan Shannon is a feminist, medical doctor, and global health academic. She is based at the UCL Institute for Global Health, Centre for Gender and Global Health and Centre for Global Health Economics, 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. Geordan is also co-founder of STEMA, a research initiative using a systems and design thinking approach to address broader systems failures in achieving human health and wellbeing in low resource settings worldwide. She was recently awarded Young Australian of the Year in the UK in recognition of her contributions to global health.

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.

Zahra Zeinali

Researcher

Researcher

Dr. Zahra Zeinali is an Iranian medical doctor who has pursued further training in global health at Johns Hopkins University. She is a graduate research assistant at Johns Hopkins, conducting research on intersectionality and health systems' leadership and an active member of the Junior Doctors Network of the World Medical Association and contributes to the Gender Equity and Youth hubs of the Global Health Workforce Network. She has previously worked with EAT, Jhpiego, and the Global Health Workforce Network at the World Health Organization. She co-founded the Iranian Medical Students’ Association as a medical student and has more than 8 years of experience in a leadership capacity with the International Federation of Medical Students´ Associations, where she served as the Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region 2014/15. She has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed scientific publications, blogs and opinion pieces about global health and has a book chapter under completion. She is passionate about gender and health equity as means to achieve social justice and prosperity for all.

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.