Barbara O’Hanlon

Barbara O’Hanlon is a recognized leader in international health policy design and implementation focused on strengthening private sector engagement. With over 35 years of experience, she is a pioneer in the areas of private sector policy reforms, public-private dialogue, and health public-private partnerships in Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South Asia.

Ms. O’Hanlon is assisting the World Bank Global Finance Facility as private sector advisor to integrate private sector themes in the Investment Case and incorporate strategies to involve the private sector in the Country Platform. She has helped multiple countries (Bangladesh, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria) integrate private sector activities into GFF Investment Case, Country Platform and assisting Ivory Coast, Myanmar, and Niger implement private sector engagement projects.

She collaborated with the World Health Organization’s Health System’s Governance and Policy Department of Health Systems Governance and Financing to create awareness and build evidence on the importance of engaging the private health sector to achieve important health goals such as universal health coverage (UHC) and address COVID-19. She also developed policy briefs, guidance notes and instructional videos focused on private sector role to support low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC) health ministries tackle COVID-19 and roll out the COVID-19 vaccine.

Over the course of her career, Ms. O’Hanlon has led and participated in over 26 private sector assessments in Latin America and Caribbean, Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia. She co-developed a methodology to carry out private sector assessments and developed global knowledge and learning products such as Public-Private Dialogue Note and MM4H Executive Training Course. She also co-authored Managing Markets for Health.

In the last 18 years, she has worked with several African health ministries to conduct private health sector assessments, analyze key health markets for private sector opportunities, formulate private sector policies, and establish health PPP Units. She has also assisted several healthcare federations in Africa to become viable membership organizations and strengthen their technical capacity to represent the private sector voice in policy design and implementation.  She has trained health ministry officials from over 15 countries and development partner public health staff in the managing health markets approach.

Ms. O’Hanlon is a founding member of the World Health Organization’s Advisory Group on the Governance of the Private Sector for Universal Health Coverage.

Ms. O’Hanlon has an MPP from the John F. Kennedy School of Public Policy at Harvard University. A native English speaker, she is fluent in Spanish and conversant in French.