Speaker Bio: Deborah McFarland

Professor, Department of Global Health and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University

Dr. Deborah A. McFarland’s specialty is international health care financing and health systems research and practice. Dr. McFarland has been involved in health policy and health financing issues for the past 30 years with particular interest in the interface of disease control programs and health systems, and the ethics and economics of resource allocation for public health priorities. She is, or has been, a member of the World Health Organization Neglected Tropical Diseases Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG), the WHO technical consultative committee for the Africa Programme on Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), the WHO/UNICEF Tropical Disease Research Special Advisory Committee and the Mectizan Expert Committee for neglected tropical diseases.

She was a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow in health policy and finance at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and with the National Governors Association on Capitol Hill. She is one of the three founders of the African Religious Health Assets Programme, a group of scholars and practitioners who are engaged with the intersection of health systems and religious structures. She is director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation endowed Foege Fellowship program in the RSPH, the Global Field Experience Program and the Peace Corps Masters International Program. She is an Open Society Foundation International Scholar supporting the development and strengthening of public health graduate education in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Dr. McFarland has been awarded numerous teaching awards including the highest honor for teaching at Emory University, the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award and the 2017 Teaching and Mentoring Excellence Award from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, the  highest teaching award in U.S. Schools of Public Health.

Dr. McFarland holds a Ph.D. in strategic management and industrial organization economics, MSc (Econ), MPH in health policy and management, and BA in biology.