LSE Health is delighted to welcome a number of new staff members. Noam Schimmel joins us as a Research Officer focussed on human rights and healthcare policy, and we have also confirmed three new appointments in the field of Global Health: Mylene Lagarde - Assistant Professor in Health Economics and Policy, Justin Parkhurst - Associate Professor in Global Health Policy, and Clare Wenham - Assistant Professor in Global Health Policy.
The appointments will further enhance LSE’s international expertise in preparation for the launch of the Global Health Initiative in autumn 2016. Noam Schimmel joins us this term, whilst the three Global Health appointments will start in September. Clare Wenham is a familiar face to the LSE Health team as an existing LSE Fellow in the Department of Social Policy. Mylene Lagarde and Justin Parkhurst join us from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Justin Parkhurst - Associate Professor in Global Health Policy
Biography
Just holds an MPhil in Development Studies and a DPhil in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of Oxford (as well as a Bachelors in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania). He joins LSE after 15 years working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His primary areas of past research covered HIV/AIDS prevention policy, including significant conceptual work on social/structural approaches to HIV, as well as additional work on HIV treatment, maternal health, and health systems development in low-income settings. More recently he has led a 5-year EU funded project on Getting Research into Policy in Health (the GRIP-Health programme – www.lshtm.ac.uk/groups/griphealth) which runs until the end of 2016 and studies the political and institutional factors shaping evidence utilisation. His manuscript: The Politics of Evidence: from Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence, is due to be published later in 2016 with Routledge.
Research plans
His future priorities will involve further work on the use of evidence to inform health policy in low and middle income settings. This includes practical work considering how to improve evidence use from a perspective of the ‘good governance of evidence’ (as described in his forthcoming book), as well as more conceptual explorations of the political and governance implications of the institutionalisation of particular evidence-utilisation strategies in aid-dependent countries.
Mylene Lagarde - Assistant Professor in Health Economics
Biography
Mylene Lagarde is a health economist who has undertaken applied economic work in many low- and middle-income countries, including South Africa, Thailand, Senegal, Benin, Peru, Kenya and Ghana. A unifying theme of her work is an effort to understand how financial and non-financial incentives shape health care providers’ behaviours, and, ultimately, patient access to health care services. Her work has studied, amongst other things, the determinants of providers’ job choices, the impact of performance contracts on provider performance and quality of care, and the impact of removing user fees on the demand for health care services.
Mylene joins LSE from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she was Senior Lecturer in Health Economics. Mylene studied Political Sciences and Business for her first degrees, graduating in Economics from La Sorbonne in 2002.
Research plans
Mylene will contribute to the development of teaching and research in global health at LSE. With her combined experience of teaching health economics to international graduate students and discussing global health issues with policy-makers in a variety of settings, she will strengthen the Faculty of the Department and bring global health policy questions alive for LSE students.
While pursuing her work on the impact of financial incentives on the performance and quality of care, Mylene intends to develop new research projects with colleagues at LSE and draw on innovative tools such as field and lab experiments to understand the determinants of patients’ and providers’ behaviours.
Clare Wenham - Assistant Professor in Global Health Policy
Biography
Clare’s work for the most part falls in the cross over between global health and international relations. Her work focuses on global health governance, health security, surveillance and infectious disease control. In particular her work focuses on pandemic influenza, Ebola and more broadly on the governance structures of the global health landscape and global disease control. Her recent work has appeared in The Lancet, Third World Quarterly and Global Health Governance.
She previously worked in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, working on a series of projects relating to surveillance and transmission of infectious disease. Prior to this she undertook a PhD in International Relations at the Centre for Health and International Relations at Aberystwyth University examining the tensions between global disease governance and individual state sovereignty. During this, she did a fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and consulted for the Asian Development Bank. Before starting her academic career, Clare worked in public health policy roles at the Faculty of Public Health and for an NHS trust.
Research plans
Clare continues to investigate the role of sovereignty and responsibility of states in global health, working on a manuscript project continuing from her PhD thesis. She also will continue to finish off her work on Ebola in security and humanitarian frames, as well as exploring the political developments of the Zika virus.
Noam Schimmel - Research Officer
Biography
Noam Schimmel is a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford University and Associate Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill University, Canada. He has an MSc in Philosophy, Policy and Social Value from the LSE and an MSt in International Human Rights Law from Oxford University. His doctoral research examined American Democratic presidential healthcare reform rhetoric, American healthcare reform policy and politics, and the human right to healthcare. He earned his interdisciplinary PhD in Media and Communication, incorporating political science, public policy, and human rights from the LSE.
His research focuses on the politics, ethics, and practice of human rights, and his articles have appeared in a range of journals of political science, human rights, development, and education. He has published on a variety of human rights topics including healthcare access, reparative justice for survivors of genocide, the rights of children and indigenous peoples, as well as on development efforts to alleviate poverty and engender and sustain human security. His most recent articles have appeared in the Journal of Human Rights and Human Rights Review.
Research plans
Noam has particular interests in the ethical dimensions of human rights law, the politics of human rights and humanitarian aid, development studies and the provision of healthcare in the context of development, global governance and its intersection with human rights law, and the role of rhetoric and communication in both advancing and limiting human rights and the right to healthcare. His forthcoming book, Presidential Healthcare Reform Rhetoric: Continuity, Change and Contested Values from Truman to Obama will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the summer of 2016.