Dr Ritu Sadana

As Head of Ageing and Health at WHO, Dr Ritu Sadana led the research and writing of WHO’s Decade of Healthy Ageing: baseline report in 2020, including the analyses of nationally representative surveys from more than 50 countries.  She also coordinated the development of the first WHO Global Strategy on Ageing and Health, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2016.  This included setting up a network of experts, an International Consortium on Metrics and Evidence for Healthy Ageing, and with Member States, approach to monitoring progress.    She also conceived the development of the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021-2030 action plan, and co-authored the WHO World Report on Ageing and Health.   

Trained as an economist and epidemiologist, Dr Sadana recently headed the WHO Secretariat that conducted research and writing for the independent Council on the Economics of Health for All, that issued its Final Report in 2023.  She also led a theme issue on this topic of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization and coordinated with sponsoring countries, a World Health Assembly resolution on Economics and Health for All,  endorsed in May 2024. 

Dr Sadana is also currently leading WHO’s efforts to fill in evidence gaps and provide guidance on how to implement a life course approach in practice, connecting a good start to life, optimal development (children, adolescents and youth) and healthy ageing, to support Ministries of Health, collaborating also with policy makers, researchers and civil society in health, education, labor and social protection sectors.  This is a cross-cutting theme of the Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent and Ageing, within the Division of Universal Health Coverage / Life Course, also engaging WHO regional and country offices, an expert network on life course, and 16 life course centers around the world, contributing to evidence reviews and analyses of quantitative studies.

She previously led the evidence arm of the WHO’s Secretariat’s support to the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, managing nine knowledge networks on distinct social determinants to complete research and evidence reviews, engaging 350 people in 150 institutions.  Dr Sadana spearheaded methods, peer evaluations and cross country collaborations to strengthen national research systems for health, and developed new methods for assessing and analyzing health in comparative manner, in the initial stages of the Global Burden of Disease Study, featured in WHO’s landmark report on Health Systems Performance.  

Dr Sadana has more than 30 years of experience in public and private sectors, working in multiple countries and regions, including WHO’s Regional Office for Europe, and with UNFPA’s County Office in Cambodia.  She has championed health equity in low-, middle- and high-income countries and has published over 250 scientific and policy publications.  She holds a Doctor of Science from Harvard University, a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Arts from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), with expertise in economics, epidemiology, demography and health policy.