Lakshmi Balaji

Dr. Balaji previously served as the Chief of Primary Health Care and Health Systems at UNICEF Headquarters until 2023. As Chief of PHC, he led jointly with WHO the PHC Accelerator in the SDG-3 Global Action Plan for Healthy lives and Well-being for All Earlier from 2014 to 2017, he headed the Afghanistan Programmes for UNICEF and managed UNICEF supported programmes in Health, Nutrition, WASH, Education, Child Protection and Social Policy. He has worked in Africa and Asia in the UN system for over three decades. He was the architect in developing the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys in 1993 and also led the development of ChildInfo/DevInfo databases on social development for UNICEF and the UN system. Most recently he managed EQUIST, the system to help develop health programs to address barriers and bottlenecks in health systems for achieving equitable results.

• Global health
• Primary health care
• Health systems
• Equity in health
• Human rights

• Global health
• Primary health care
• Equity in health

• All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, PhD in Medicine, 1989
• National Board of Examinations, Delhi, India, Dip.N.B. in Public Health, 1988
• University of Delhi, India, MBBS, 1980

• Visiting Faculty, School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University 2024
• Adjunct Faculty, School of Global Public Health, New York University 2024
• Chief, Primary Health Care and Health Systems Strengthening, UNICEF HQ. 2017-2023
• Deputy Representative and Programme Coordinator, UNICEF, Afghanistan 2014-2017
• Chief of Strategic Planning, Division of Policy and Planning, UNICEF HQ 2004-2014

• Global health economics: The Equitable Impact Sensitive Tool (EQUIST) – development, validation, implementation and evaluation of impact (2011 to 2022), Journal of Global Health, Dec. 15, 2023.
• Op-Ed: G20: Are we prepared for inevitable global health crises? Forbes-India, Sept. 6, 2023.
• Political economy analysis of subnational health management in Kenya, Malawi and Uganda Health Policy and Planning - The Journal on Health Policy and Systems Research (LSHTM), April 11, 2023.
• Assessing socio-economic profile of U-Reporters: Towards establishing a pool for equity analysis of future crowdsourced surveys Journal of Global Health, July 1, 2021.
• Op-Ed: Lesson for G-20: Economic systems can’t go on sans robust health systems. The Economic Times, India,  June 5, 2023.