Natalie Phaholyothin oversees the overall health portfolio in Asia. She manages the Transforming Health Systems (THS) program which aims to support countries towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Natalie works closely with THS’s partners to build capacity, generate evidence for policy making and create sustainable partnerships and networks for health systems strengthening and UHC. Natalie works with the Ministry of Health in Vietnam in the areas of provider payment reform, health technology assessment and benefits package design. In Bangladesh, she collaborates with local partners in the government and civil society to build momentum for UHC and to lay the groundwork for its policy development and implementation. She is also involved in overseeing a growing global network of UHC practitioners, the Joint Learning Network (JLN), through a trust fund to the World Bank.

Through RF’s pioneering Disease Surveillance Networks (DSN) initiative, she facilitated the institutionalization of a regional disease surveillance network – the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Network (MBDS) which is now the MBDS Foundation. The MBDS Foundation and the network in which it serves have been instrumental in building capacities at cross border areas in the Greater Mekong Sub-region to monitor, track and prevent infectious disease outbreaks through community engagement and innovative solutions. Natalie also serves on the Executive Board of the newly created organization. In addition, she collaborates closely with RF’s Research team in overseeing the trend-monitoring work in Asia. She also provides management advice to the Asia Office’s regional grant-making.

Natalie serves as RF’s Asia Lead for The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), a joint collaboration between USAID-SIDA-RF which aims to build greater resilience to the most poor and vulnerable populations in the Horn of the Sahel and South and Southeast Asia. Prior to joining RF, Natalie was with Education Development Center (EDC) where she oversaw the Asia Pacific CSR programs for Hewlett-Packard and Deutsche Bank. She has previously worked in Lao PDR and Honduras with the IMF and UNDP. Natalie graduated with a double-major in Economics and International Relations from Brown University. She has a M.A in International Economics from the State University of New York (SUNY-Albany), and a M.Phil from L’Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (SciencesPo) in Political Economy.

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