Tomas Lievens

Biography

Tomas Lievens is an experienced health economist with expertise in qualitative and quantitative analysis, health financing including financing for HIV and AIDS, health labour markets and insurance. Much of his work has focused on ways of introducing financing mechanisms to assist the poor and excluded to access health services. He has extensive experience in the design and implementation of health economic research as well as with operationalising the results of research into strategic thinking and policy advice for health sector clients, which he has most recently applied to issues of human resources for health.

In the last five years he carried out public expenditure reviews in Lesotho and Sierra Leone, contributed to the health financing strategies in Georgia, Lesotho and Sierra Leone, implemented health sector costing exercises in Kenya and Timor Leste, and a public expenditure tracking survey in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Belize he engaged the National AIDS Commission in preliminary thinking on setting up National AIDS Accounts. He is currently leading a team that helps develop AIDS financing strategies in nine African countries. For two years Tomas taught the Public Expenditure Analysis Tools component of OPM’s training programme on public financial management for UNICEF. Previously, as a regional advisor at the ILO, he was involved in setting up community health financing schemes in several African countries.

Tomas has recently led a series of analytical studies into health human resource issues. These were qualitative and quantitative research including stated preference methods in Cambodia, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Vietnam. He published on a range of issues in HRH including incentives, institutions, sector allocation, absenteeism, migration, and motivation.