PHCPI Governance

Steering Committee

The Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (2015-2022) was a partnership among the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank Group, World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Global Fund, with technical partners Ariadne Labs and Results for Development.

While active, PHCPI was guided by a Steering Committee comprised of senior leaders in primary health care and health system strengthening from each of the core partner organizations. Read the statement from the Steering Committee regarding PHCPI’s transition here.

  • Juan Pablo Uribe, Global Director, Health, Nutrition and Population, World Bank Group

    Juan Pablo Uribe, MD, is the Global Director for Health Nutrition and Population at the World Bank and Director of the Global Financing Facility for Women Children and Adolescents (GFF). Previously, Mr. Uribe was the CEO of Healthcare Providers for United Healthcare/Banmédica for Chile and Peru and served from 2018 to 2019 as Minister of Health and Social Protection of Colombia. Prior to that, he was the Director General of the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, a leading organization in Colombia working in health care, health education and public health. Between 2009 and 2011, he was the World Bank´s Health Sector Manager for East Asia and the Pacific. In his career, first as a medical doctor specializing in public health and public administration, and later in both public and private sector organizations, Mr. Uribe has contributed significantly to the development of public health, health systems and public policies.
  • Asaf Bitton, Executive Director, Ariadne Labs

    Asaf Bitton, M.D., M.P.H., is the executive director of Ariadne Labs, a health systems innovation center at Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is a national and global expert on primary care policy, financing, and delivery. He is currently a senior advisor for primary care policy at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. In this role since 2012, he has helped design and test three major comprehensive primary care payment and delivery initiatives, representing the largest tests of combined primary care payment and clinical practice transformation work in the United States.
    He previously served as director of Ariadne Labs' Primary Health Care Program, leading primary care measurement and improvement work in over a dozen countries along with previous work directing regional primary care practice learning collaboratives in Massachusetts. Dr. Bitton practices primary care at Brigham and Women’s South Huntington clinic, a team-based community primary care practice in Boston that he helped found in 2011. He is an associate professor of medicine and health care policy at both Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He currently serves on the National Advisory Council for Healthcare Research at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in the U.S., and is an elected member of the International Academy of Quality and Safety.
  • Tracey McNeill, Director, Health Systems, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    As the director of Health Systems, Tracey McNeill leads the team which builds on the foundation’s and field’s deep experience in health systems strengthening, system design, and service delivery innovation and aims to dramatically improve the efficiency, quality, and equity of primary health care.

    Previously, Tracey was vice president of Global Clinical Governance and Quality and chief mobilization officer at Babylon Healthcare and CEO of its digital health subsidiary in Rwanda, Babyl Rwanda. At Babylon Healthcare, Tracey worked with global regulators and policymakers to ensure delivery of high-quality primary health care services through virtual consultations across the UK and internationally. At Babyl Rwanda, she partnered with the government of Rwanda and stakeholders to roll out the digital health service as a part of the government’s universal health coverage scheme.

    Tracey also served as the senior vice president and commercial director at Marie Stopes International, where she collaborated with a diverse set of country leadership teams to expand the organization’s international programs in hard-to-reach areas.

    Tracey holds a post-graduate qualification in Occupational Health from The RCN London and a certification as a registered nurse from The Royal Free Hospital.
  • Dr. Rudolf Eggers, Director, Integrated Health Services, WHO

    Dr Rudolf (“Rudi”) Eggers is a public health physician from South Africa, where he obtained his medical degree and post-graduate specialization in public health, epidemiology, disease control and health administration and financing from the University of Pretoria. In addition, he has postgraduate diplomas in health administration and financing and in occupational health. Dr Eggers has been the Director for Integrated Health Services in the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters since September 2021. Before this, he was the World Health Organization Representative to Kenya since 1st September 2016. In this role, he represents the World Health Organization (WHO) in Kenya, under its mandate of providing support to all aspects of health advancement through the Government of Kenya. During the COVID-19 response activities in Kenya, he has been actively led the WHO engagement with the Kenyan government to counter this pandemic. Before his appointment as WHO Representative Kenya, he was the WHO team leader for routine immunization and immunization systems strengthening in WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland for eleven years, where he developed the global strategies for routine immunization, and actively participated in the global immunization partnerships focused on immunization system strengthening, including the Global Vaccine Action Plan development and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (Gavi).
  • Suraya Dalil, Director, Special Programme on Primary Health Care, World Health Organization

    Dr. Suraya Dalil is the Director of the WHO Special Programme on Primary Health Care – a new programme established last year. She was the Minister of Public Health in Afghanistan from March 2012 through 2014 and Acting Minister of Public Health from January 2010 to February 2012. Dr. Dalil was Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the UN and international organizations based in Geneva and Ambassador to Switzerland from October 2015 to March 2019. Her profile encompasses humanitarian leadership, health expertise and diplomacy. She holds a medical degree from Afghanistan and a Master’s degree in public health from Harvard University, where she is a visiting university fellow.
  • Gina Lagomarsino, President and CEO, Results for Development

    Gina is one of the original co-founders of Results for Development, a nonprofit that works with change agents across the globe to create self-sustaining systems that support healthy, educated people. Gina helped design and launch the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage, a network of policymakers in low- and middle-income countries working together to develop practical solutions to the challenges of achieving universal health coverage, and is supporting R4D's current efforts to develop a similar network for education system leaders. She also supported the development of the Center for Health Market Innovations, which has identified and is promoting learning among more than 1,500 innovative health efforts in 110 countries. Prior to her work in global development, Gina designed and implemented the reform of a free public health coverage program serving low-income Washington, D.C. residents. Gina holds a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University and bachelor’s degree in public policy from Stanford University.
  • Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, Director of Health, UNICEF

    Dr. Aboubacar Kampo is the Director of Health at UNICEF Headquarters. In this role, he provides
    strategic leadership, management support and overall direction to UNICEF’s global health programme.

    With over 20 years of experiences in development aid and humanitarian assistance, Dr. Kampo has worked as a physician/surgeon in hospitals and clinics in rural and urban areas in Africa and Asia and has over 14 years’ experience in senior management position as Country Director, Senior Global Health Advisor, Chief of Health and Nutrition with International NGOs and United Nations’ Agencies.

    Dr. Kampo is a Medical Doctor and Public Health Specialist, passionate about using innovations to address real life community challenges and bridge the gap between communities and stakeholders.

Secretariat 

A core Secretariat team managed PHCPI’s day-to-day work in close collaboration with dedicated teams of experts from each partner organization.  

  • Jeff Markuns, Executive Director

    As a practicing family doctor for the urban underserved, with fellowship training in health professional education and almost two decades of experience in postgraduate training for Family Medicine, Jeff has developed a deep understanding of frontline primary health care and the human resource capacity-building necessary to support its success. As Executive Director of the Boston University Global Health Collaborative, Jeff has led successful long-term Family Medicine development programs over the last decade to promote primary health care system strengthening throughout southeast Asia and in Lesotho in southern Africa, working towards national-level scale up of horizontally and vertically-integrated primary care service delivery models. Jeff’s experience with challenges in measuring and evaluating this success drives his pursuit of more and better measurement with PHCPI. Jeff received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts, his MD at Saint Louis University, and his masters of education at Boston University.
  • Emily T. Bigelow, Senior Director - Advocacy, Partnerships, Communications

    Emily is passionate about strong health systems, social justice and the power of advocacy to drive action. As part of the Secretariat, she leads PHCPI’s work to make the case for strategic investments in primary health care and PHC measurement; manage and activate the Allies Improving PHC network; coordinate advocacy & communications across core partner organizations; and build external partnerships across health and development. Previously, she was a Director at Global Health Strategies, where she provided advocacy and communications support to leading actors in global health, with a focus on universal health coverage and health systems reform. As part of this work, she helped to launch Universal Health Coverage Day in 2014—now officially recognized by the United Nations—and supported UHC2030 to lead and grow the annual campaign until 2020. She enjoys building coalitions, bridging the technical and the political, and bringing creative ideas to life; and has worked on issues including gender equity, sexual and reproductive health and rights, neglected tropical diseases, quality medicines, and more. Emily graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in social studies and secondary focus on global health and health policy.
  • Colleen Keating, Programs Manager

    Colleen Keating manages programs and operations for the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative. With a background in research and evaluation, her goal is to support strong measurement that informs strategic health policies, investments, and partnerships. Prior to joining PHCPI, Colleen worked as a Research Associate on a national health and aging study, where she coordinated the development of survey instruments and field staff training. As Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist in Madagascar, she evaluated a sexual health education curriculum and led qualitative and quantitative participatory research. Colleen holds a B.A. in International Relations from Boston University and an M.Sc. in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
  • Sam Friedmann, Operations Assistant

    Sam serves as an Operations Assistant within the PHCPI Secretariat. She is passionate about strengthening primary health care systems and advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. Through her position as a graduate research assistant, Sam is researching how financial insecurity impacts HIV outcomes. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs & Diplomacy, Political Science, and Spanish from University of Mount Union and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in International Development with a concentration in Global Health from American University.
  • Precious Williams, Operations Assistant

    Precious Williams is an MPH Candidate specializing in Global Health Epidemiology and Disease Control at George Washington University.
    Her background in microbiology clinical research led her pursuit in public health towards understanding mechanisms for strengthening healthcare and preventing disease in low resource communities.
    Precious has previous experience in developing a healthcare quality program for a medical diagnostic center in Nigeria. She is passionate about understanding the gaps and hindrances to the prevention and control of diseases in West Africa.