Keynote speaker

This years Keynote speaker will be Ellen Van De Poel, Senior Health Economist, World Bank.

Ellen Van de Poel (PhD) is a senior Health Economist in the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, working closely with the Moroccan government on their health sector reform as well as supporting the World Bank’s Health Financing portfolio in the region more broadly. Prior to joining the MENA region, Ellen was leading the Health Financing team within the Global Financing Facility (GFF), a Trust Fund and Partnership in the World Bank focused on improving sustainable financing for maternal and child health outcomes in partner countries, mostly concentrated in Sub Saharan Africa. She provided support to countries in developing and implementing strategies to mobilize more domestic resources for health and improve the efficiency of health spending and coordination across development partners more generally. Before joining the GFF, and the World Bank, Ellen was an associate professor of Health Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands). Her research focused on evaluating health financing reforms and on the measurement of equity in health and has been published in leading journals. She received her PhD in 2009 from the Erasmus School of Economics. She is currently based in Rabat (Morocco) since 2023, after having spent 3 years in Dakar (Senegal).