Stanley Ezenwa is a public health professional with over 8 years of expertise in health financing, health program design, health system strengthening, policy development, and management geared toward advancing universal health coverage. He has worked extensively with organizations to improve health systems in West African countries.
Mr. Ezenwa is a program officer at Results for Development (R4D) working in R4D’s health financing portfolio, on programs funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and on USAID funded projects and interventions in Nigeria. He coordinates with Nigeria’s federal government to institutionalize health budget process reforms across the 36 states plus the capital territory. Mr. Ezenwa provides sustainable mechanisms to channel government and donor partners’ expenditure to the primary health care system, with the goal of lowering out-of-pocket expenses for covered services.
Mr. Ezenwa supports the Ministry of Health (MOH), National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) through capacity development, evidence generation, synthesis and knowledge translation. Working with partners and stakeholders, he supports the implementation of the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF) which is the largest pro-poor focused fund from the government of Nigeria to improve primary health care services and reduce maternal and child mortality. He works closely with the NHIA to design and implement their leadership development program which aims to strengthen the policy development and implementation capacities of the NHIA at the national and sub-national levels and reposition the federal organization to provide technical support to state social health insurance schemes towards increasing financial risk protection.
He has also worked on Nigeria’s demand side financing project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand enrollment in healthcare services in Niger, in Kaduna states and among vulnerable groups. He also provides technical and management guidance to analytic work outputs for PHC financing strategies for the federal government of Nigeria.
Mr. Ezenwa’s career has been focused on expanding healthcare coverage and access to low- and middle-income populations. He started his work in public health by supporting operational research, developing and facilitating capacity-building modules and tools for BHCPF, and providing technical and administrative support to mobile teams on field missions.
Prior to joining R4D, Mr. Ezenwa was an independent verification agent for the Nigeria State Health Investment Project of the Nigeria Primary Health Care Agency, where he implemented quality and quantity verification and counter-verification for primary health care centers in northeastern Nigeria.
Mr. Ezenwa holds a BS degree in physiology from the Anambra State University, and an MSc in health economics from the Nasarawa State University, Keffi. He is a native speaker of Igbo and also speaks fluent English.
