Adeel Ishtiaq is a program director in the global health portfolio at Results for Development (R4D). He currently leads activities under the USAID Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator program on enhancing access to safe blood transfusions for reducing maternal mortality from postpartum hemorrhage, scaling up mental health and psychosocial services as part of comprehensive primary healthcare, and integrating rehabilitation services and technologies into broader health financing. His work has also spanned family planning and reproductive health, maternal and child health, HIV, neglected tropical diseases, and primary healthcare writ large.
Since he joined R4D in 2013, Adeel has been engaged in health systems strengthening and health financing reform initiatives in countries pursuing universal health coverage (UHC) and seeking to sustainably finance priority health and disease areas. His work covers key themes in the planning and implementation of social protection policy in health, including: design of pooling-purchasing mechanisms for financing UHC, approaches for enhancing fiscal space and domestic resource mobilization, reform of public financial management and strategic purchasing modalities, strengthening governance arrangements and institutional alignment, integration of vertical programs and transition from donor assistance, public-private engagement to improve the performance of mixed health systems, sustainability of health commodities and supply chains, and key analytics such as costing and gap analyses. In addition to global-level analysis and engagement activities, he has worked on country-focused R4D projects in East, West, and Southern Africa and Southeast Asia.
Prior to joining R4D, Adeel worked on financial risk management in the banking sector and at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat on managing enterprise risk in building capacity for economic and social policymaking in low- and middle-income countries.
Adeel holds an MA in international relations from Yale University—where he was a Jelke Fellow concentrating in international macroeconomic policymaking—and a BA in economics from LUMS University in Pakistan. At Yale, he headed the International and Area Studies Students Association, researched Yale’s international educational resources for federal Title VI funding at the university’s Macmillan Center, and served as a managing editor for the Yale Journal of International Affairs.
