ECA Talk: Out-of-Pocket Health Expenditures - Challenges and Policies in Europe and Central Asia

Antonella Bassani is Vice President of the Europe and Central Asia Region at the World Bank. In this position, Antonella leads the World Bank's strategic, financing and knowledge work for this region. Antonella has held several senior leadership positions in the World Bank, including most recently as Vice President for Budget, Performance Review and Strategic Planning. Prior to that she was responsible for overseeing operations in two regions as Director for Strategy and Operations (East Asia and Pacific, Middle East and North Africa), providing leadership and support to regional teams in the delivery of high-quality strategies and operations, flexible and innovative financing, and knowledge services. She also played a leading role in the innovative and strategic mobilization of Bank resources, including two successful replenishments for the lnternational Development Association.

Dr. Winnie Yip is Professor of Global Health Policy and Economics in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and serves as the Faculty Director of the school-wide China Health Partnership. Her research focuses on rigorous and policy-relevant health system evaluations and the design and testing of innovative health system interventions to improve equitable access to efficient and good quality health care, particularly in China and India. In addition, she has studied and advised health care reforms in the wider Asia region, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam. Dr. Yip has served as an adviser to many international agencies, including the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

Dr. Jishnu Das is a distinguished professor of public policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Previously he was a lead economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank where he helped write the World Development Report on Gender and Development (2012). Jishnu’s work focuses on health and education in low and middle-income countries. In the health field, he was part of the team that developed India’s federal inpatient health insurance scheme, the RSBY, which reached 150 million people in 2016. He has also led an agenda on quality in healthcare which, among other things, has led to the adoption of health facility inspections and healthcare quality measurement tools in various countries.

Joe Kutzin is a health economist with nearly 40 years of experience, working in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, and the United States.  He worked for a private health policy foundation and the World Bank before joining WHO in 1994. With WHO, he served in Kyrgyzstan as Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Health, in Copenhagen and Barcelona as the European Region’s lead advisor on health financing, and in Headquarters as lead of the Health Financing Team globally. He has published numerous conceptual and empirical articles on health systems, health financing, and Universal Health Coverage. He has been an independent consultant and Senior Fellow with Results for Development since his retirement from WHO in April 2023.

Sven Neelsen, PhD, is an economist in the World Bank’s Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice for the Europe and Central Asia region where he is currently supporting health system reforms in Tajikistan and North Macedonia. He is also involved in the measurement and tracking of Sustainable Development Goal 3.8 – Universal Health Coverage – with a specific focus on financial protection against high out-of-pocket health expenditures. Prior to his engagement in the Europe and Central Asia region, he has led or contributed to projects in Thailand, Peru, Belize, Pakistan, Zambia and Uganda.

Ivailo Izvorski is the Chief Economist for the Europe and Central Asia region. He assumed this position on December 1, 2022. Since joining the World Bank in 2005 as a Senior Country Economist for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management sector Unit, he has held various positions — including Lead Economist and Practice Manager in Europe and Central Asia, and his most recent assignment as Practice Manager for the Global Macro, Growth and Debt unit in the Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment (MTI) Global Practice.