Ipsita Parida was a senior policy analyst in the global health program at the Center for Global Development, working on the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI) and currently focusing on health systems strengthening, health financing, and healthcare innovations in the context of universal health coverage programs in India. She has over 11 years of experience as a technical health policy expert, having worked in multiple global health organizations across research institutions, academia, private foundations, multilaterals, international NGOs, and various ministries of health. Prior to joining CGD, she led the youth/adolescent and private sector efforts for the family planning program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in India. She developed strategy and built the investment pipeline for the entire family planning program portfolio and provided technical assistance to the Ministry of Health in India in the rollout of the new national program for injectables and new methods of contraception, among other key initiatives. She has extensive experience in the design and development of health financing schemes and universal health coverage programs in Latin America and India in previous work with the World Bank and on primary healthcare strengthening and capacity-building efforts in India with the Harvard School of Public Health, as well.
Additionally, she has conducted large-scale randomized control trials in health through work on the national TB program and non-communicable diseases in India with the Poverty Action Lab South Asia and on other maternal, newborn, and child health programs training traditional birth attendants under the WHO/NIH First Breath initiative. Through her career as a medical doctor and a health sector expert she has undertaken various other projects focused on maternal and child health, water and sanitation programming, governance and education in India and other geographies like East Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Parida holds a graduate degree in medicine and is a trained physician from Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi. She also has a Master’s in Public Administration in International Development (MPAID) with a focus in health economics from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she was a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar.
