Funding evidence-informed policy initiatives: priorities for now and the near future

Prior to joining WHO, Dr Farrar was Director of the Wellcome Trust. In his 9 years there, he oversaw a series of major reforms, restructuring and growth, with Wellcome now collaborating with partners around the world and focused on fundamental discovery research and three challenge areas of: infectious diseases; climate and health; and mental health, all with a commitment to ensuring that equity, diversity and inclusion are central to the science they support. Before joining Wellcome, Dr Farrar spent over 17 years as Director of the Clinical Research Unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City in Viet Nam. His clinical and research interests have been in integrated health research across a range of infectious diseases and noncommunicable illness including emerging infections, influenza, infections of the brain, dengue, typhoid, malaria, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, opportunistic infections related to HIV and stroke. Dr Farrar was the founding chair of WHO’s R&D Blueprint and the founding director of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) that led on to the work of the RECOVERY Trial and the UK COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium. Dr Farrar trained in neurology and infectious diseases in London, Edinburgh and Oxford in the United Kingdom and in Melbourne in Australia. He has a PhD in Immunology from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in partnership with the University of California in San Francisco in the United States of America.

Montasser is the Director for Global Health at Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), formerly the Program Leader for Maternal and Child Health, and for Health Research Partnerships. Montasser was the Deputy Director for Global Health Policy and Research at Global Affairs Canada, and Team Leader of Health Specialists, and Manager of Multilateral Health Institutions and Partnerships at CIDA. At the Regional Office of the Ford Foundation in Cairo he supported research, policy, and programming related to sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. Montasser has MD, Diploma, MSc, and PhD degrees in medicine, international development, and medical anthropology from Egypt, the UK and Canada.

Chris Chibwana is a Program Officer in Gender Equity and Governance at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Chris manages a portfolio of grants that aim to strengthen the effectiveness of governments in Africa and improve outcomes for all people. Chris has 15 years of experience designing, managing, and evaluating development programs. Chris joined the foundation from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya where he served as head of the Hub for Agricultural Policy Action, an initiative designed to help governments use data and evidence to foster the enabling environment for agriculture. Prior to that, Chris spent four years working to improve lives with data and evidence as a partner and the head of Africa for IDinsight, based in Lusaka, Zambia. In this role, he was IDinsight's primary regional representative and was responsible for realizing the organization's sector-transforming vision for the Africa region. He also served at USAID for seven years, including a year in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he led the design of a large, multisector project to improve nutrition outcomes for women and adolescent girls in the southwest region of Bangladesh. He also worked at USAID in Malawi, where he designed and oversaw projects to support evidence-informed decision-making by the Malawi government to improve results for smallholder farmers. His work as a researcher with the International Food Policy Research Institute contributed to the body of knowledge that informed subsequent reforms to the Malawi government's agricultural input subsidy program, a key government policy to enhance food security. Chris has a master's degree in agricultural economics from Purdue University in Indiana and a bachelor's degree in agribusiness management from the University of Malawi.

2021: Deputy Secretary General of the Foundation; 2015: Head of the Funding Department and Member of the Executive Board; 2010-2015: Head of the team "People and Structures" within the funding department; 1998: Transfer to the Volkswagen Foundation as specialist for biomedicine and neuroscience; 1995-1998: Postdoctoral fellow at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School/USA and research associate in pharmacology at the University of Frankfurt. 1993: Doctorate in the field of psychopharmacology at the Central Institute for Mental Health in Mannheim/University of Heidelberg; 1984-1989: Pharmacy studies in Freiburg.

Angela Bednarek, Ph.D., directs the Evidence Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts. The project promotes innovative and participatory research and problem-solving processes that can inform equitable and effective policy and practice. She created and now leads the Transforming Evidence Funders Network, a global, cross-sectoral network of public and private funders driving change in how research and evidence are produced, mobilized and used for societal impact. She has published and presented widely on improving the connections between research, policy, and practice. She serves on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication Research and Practice, as vice-chair of the board of the Global Council for Science and the Environment, and on the Research Advisory Council for the Partnership for Public Service. Bednarek holds a doctorate in biology from the University of Pennsylvania.