Ali Mehdi
Ali is a Fellow at ICRIER, and has been associated with the institute since 2007. He established the Health Policy Initiative (www.icrier-health.org; @healthICRIER) at ICRIER in 2014, and has been leading it since. He has more than 10 years of analytical and multidisciplinary research experience, focusing on a broad range of health and demographic issues –the process, design and analytical frame for assessment of health policies; prevention of chronic diseases along with the policy instruments and institutional design for its promotion; social determinants of health; the metrics and measurement of health inequities; health financing, governance and manpower; fertility and mortality patterns; demographic dividend; drug regulation; etc. He has published a number of papers and book chapters on these themes, and will be coming out with two major books by leading international publishers by the end of 2016. He is also working towards a comprehensive India Health Report in 2017.
As part of the Health Policy Initiative, he has successfully engaged with various influential stakeholders – from central- and state-level policymakers to representatives of international organizations, industry, civil society and the academia – and has collaborated/conducted field research in several Indian states as well as developed and developing countries (US, UK, Canada, Japan, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka), making our research representative and capable of drawing actionable policy lessons from a wide variety of contexts. The philosophy behind such engagement has been to consider the challenges, concerns and standpoints of various stakeholders so that they can be reflected in our research and enable us to be independent in our analysis and policy recommendations. Ali has been able to keep public health at the heart of our work, while maintaining a pro-industry focus and highlighting the critical role of governments in terms of overall responsibility for the health of citizens and the need for a strong regulatory framework towards this end.
Ali is also involved with our Jobs for Development project, sponsored by The World Bank, Washington DC. In 2015, he coauthored a paper on ‘Human capital potential of India’s future workforce’ (ICRIER Working Paper 308), and is writing one on ‘Challenges for job creation in fragile situations: A case study of Kashmir’. This paper will form part of a broader report that Ali is planning on this theme in the South Asian context (analyzing challenges for job creation in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka as well as Telangana and Kashmir in India) by the end of 2016. This will be the first work on this theme in the context of South Asia, which has until now been neglected given the predominant focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Ali completed his Masters living in the footsteps of the Black Forest at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, and PhD at the highly cosmopolitan Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany with a full scholarship under the Excellence Initiative of the German government.
Address: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
Core 6A, 4th Floor, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003, India
T: +91 11 4311 2453 * F: +91 11 2462 0180 * M: +91 9717764308
As part of the Health Policy Initiative, he has successfully engaged with various influential stakeholders – from central- and state-level policymakers to representatives of international organizations, industry, civil society and the academia – and has collaborated/conducted field research in several Indian states as well as developed and developing countries (US, UK, Canada, Japan, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka), making our research representative and capable of drawing actionable policy lessons from a wide variety of contexts. The philosophy behind such engagement has been to consider the challenges, concerns and standpoints of various stakeholders so that they can be reflected in our research and enable us to be independent in our analysis and policy recommendations. Ali has been able to keep public health at the heart of our work, while maintaining a pro-industry focus and highlighting the critical role of governments in terms of overall responsibility for the health of citizens and the need for a strong regulatory framework towards this end.
Ali is also involved with our Jobs for Development project, sponsored by The World Bank, Washington DC. In 2015, he coauthored a paper on ‘Human capital potential of India’s future workforce’ (ICRIER Working Paper 308), and is writing one on ‘Challenges for job creation in fragile situations: A case study of Kashmir’. This paper will form part of a broader report that Ali is planning on this theme in the South Asian context (analyzing challenges for job creation in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka as well as Telangana and Kashmir in India) by the end of 2016. This will be the first work on this theme in the context of South Asia, which has until now been neglected given the predominant focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Ali completed his Masters living in the footsteps of the Black Forest at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, and PhD at the highly cosmopolitan Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany with a full scholarship under the Excellence Initiative of the German government.
Address: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
Core 6A, 4th Floor, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003, India
T: +91 11 4311 2453 * F: +91 11 2462 0180 * M: +91 9717764308
less
InterestsView All (7)
Uploads
Papers by Ali Mehdi
India because of the ongoing demographic and epidemiological transition and the rising
challenges of chronic diseases. In this regard, the presence of robust chronic disease risk
factors, morbidity and mortality surveillance mechanisms can go a long way in prevention and
reduction of socioeconomic costs associated with such illnesses.
In the last century, chronic disease surveillance was not a major health concern or policy focus
although there were explicit policy efforts for collection of vital statistics related to cancer in
India under the National Cancer Registry Programme (NCRP). However, with growing burden of
chronic diseases, in the last decade two important chronic disease risk factor surveillance efforts
were initiated in India. These studies are namely, WHO-ICMR Non-Communicable Disease (NCD)
risk factor surveillance and NCD risk factor survey under the Integrated Disease Surveillance
Project (IDSP).
Investing in chronic disease risk factors, morbidity and mortality surveillance is the need of the
hour and desires greater social, political and governmental support. Moreover, the public health
system in India should also be prepared to devote greater financial and human resources to support
development of a robust chronic disease surveillance system. Although NCDs surveillance
is outlined as an important strategy under the National Programme for Prevention and Control
of Diabetes, Cardiovascular diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS), the focus is on early diagnosis and
opportunistic screening at selected facilities.
Although, the public health system is grappling with resource constraints but there is room for
more efforts to undertake systematic population-based chronic disease surveillance in India.
Organization and implementation of population-based chronic disease surveillance requires additional
resources and is dependent on ability to recruit appropriate human resources for the
surveillance operations. In addition, local support is critical to create a conducive environment
to contact respondents and for information recording.
Also, there is a need for developing mechanisms for engagement of AYUSH sector and community
health workers (ASHAs or others) in population based surveillance. But it should be backed
by a sound incentive mechanism to ensure good coverage and programme outreach. Incentives
should also be provided for screening as well as follow up activities.
Private sector can be useful partner in NCDs surveillance. However, private sector would need
support and enabling environment to come up with services through public-private partnership
(PPP) mode. Also, the public sector should develop institutional capacity to facilitate and support
PPP initiatives. Clearly, it is a major challenge ahead to ensure quality improvement as well
as sustainability of efforts in the area of NCDs surveillance.
Primary health systems, however, continue to focus almost exclusively on child mortality. They need to make a health system transition and engage in prevention of chronic diseases – the major cause of adult mortality – together with their original focus on child mortality.
This policy brief analyzes some of the major challenges in terms of governance, manpower and financing that such a transition will be faced with, and develops a number of actionable policy recommendations. It does so based on extensive desk and field research in 4 Indian states – Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu – and 4 countries – Japan, Canada, United States, Sri Lanka – involving interactions with close to 200 stakeholders from policy, industry, international organizations, civil society and the academia.
In less than a decade, the burden of chronic diseases will overwhelm health systems in India – 89 percent of mortality will happen at 30+ year level by 2025-2030. A reorientation of national and state health policy, systems and resources is urgently required. The Central government should accept its moral responsibility, strengthen its regulatory capacity, and provide technical together with financial support to state / UT governments. The latter, on their part, would have to embrace their legal responsibility of being the primary agents for survival and health of their populations. Their role is critical because prevention of chronic diseases requires a sustained, long-term engagement.