Marty Makinen PhD

Marty oversees and contributes to a portfolio of work by R4D through global and country-specific projects and activities in health financing and systems. The global projects include the USAID-funded MCSP led by Jhpiego, the HFG project led by Abt Associates, and JLN on UHC funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The country projects include Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, and Benin. Overall, the portfolio has country-level work in about a dozen countries in Africa and Latin America.

The array of specific topics taken up by this work include the development and implementation of health financing strategies, developing tools for diagnosis of health systems barriers and solutions to them for RMNCH services, costs and financing of specific services, private sector roles in health, development of UHC health insurance systems and institutions, health financing systems and quality, and domestic resource mobilization for health, among others.

Marty is an economist with more than 40 years of experience. Before joining R4D in 2008, he spent 23 years at Abt Associates Inc. where he directed three global health financing and systems projects and has held academic positions at the Universities of Delaware and Michigan. Dr. Makinen has worked with more than 40 low and middle-income countries on practical solutions to systems, financing, and economic issues in all regions of the world, with specific emphasis on Francophone Africa and South Asia.