Peter Berman, MSc, PhD
Prof. Peter Berman (M.Sc, Ph.D) is a health economist with forty years of experience in research, policy analysis and development, and training and education in global health. Prof. Berman is Professor and Director, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada, and Adjunct Professor in Global Health at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, as of January 1, 2019.
He relocated to Vancouver, Canada after a quarter century on the faculty of Harvard University, most recently as Professor of the Practice of Global Health Systems and Economics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) in Boston, USA. He is also affliated as Adjunct Professor at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) in New Delhi, India and as advisor to the China National Health Development Research Center for health care financing and health accounts.
Prof. Berman was the founding faculty director of Harvard Chan’s new Doctor of Public Health degree and has been actively engaged in graduate education reform in global public health at Harvard. In recent years, Prof. Berman has led several innovative research projects on developing primary care systems, strengthening service delivery, and improving health care financing mechanisms for better outcomes, with a focus on work in Ethiopia, India, and Malaysia.
With the World Bank from 2004-2011, Prof. Berman spent four years in the Bank’s New Delhi office as Lead Economist for Health, Nutrition, and Population. There he oversaw a portfolio of almost $2 billion in projects and research. In Washington, D.C from 2008, he was Lead Health Economist in the HNP anchor department and Practice Leader for the World Bank’s Health Systems Global Expert Team. He led analytical work on health systems analysis and strategic approaches to improving service delivery.
Previously at Harvard Prof. Berman was the founding Director of the International Health Systems Program in the Population and International Health Department. He is the author or editor of five books on global health economics and policy and more than 50 academic papers in his field and numerous other working papers and reports. He has led and/or participated in major field programs in all regions of the developing world.
Prof. Berman’s specific areas of work include analysis of health systems performance and the design of reform strategies; assessment of the supply side of health care delivery and the role of private health care provision in health systems and development of strategies to improve outcomes through public-private sector collaboration. He pioneered the development and use of national health accounts as a policy and planning tool in developing countries. Prof. Berman has worked extensively on health system reform and health care development issues in a number of countries including Egypt, India, Colombia, Indonesia, and Poland. He has also worked for extended periods of residency and field work in Indonesia and India. He is co-author of Getting Health Reform Right: A Guide to Improving Performance and Equity (Roberts, et al, Oxford University Press, 2008), co-editor of the Guide to the Production of National Health Accounts (World Bank, World Health Organization, and USAID, 2003), and co-editor of Berman and Khan, Paying for India’s Health Care (Sage, 1993).