Scholarship and Biography
Dr. Nandakumar is a Professor of the Practice at Brandeis University where is the Academic Director of the Global Studies Programs at the Heller School, Director and is the Director of the Institute for Global Health and Development. Dr. Nandakumar has also served as the Director the MS Program in Global Health Policy and Management as well as the Director of the PhD Program. He also serves as a Senior Advisor at the state department at Global Heath Security and Diplomacy/PEPFAR Office and as Senior Advisor to the Health Office at USAID India.
Dr. Nandakumar has served as the first Chief Economist at the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. Dr. Nandakumar also served for four years as the first Chief Economist for the Global Health Bureau at USAID. In that role he provided intellectual leadership relating to all aspects of health economics within USAID’s Bureau for Global Health, and provides expert strategic and analytical support to USAID’s global health work in priority countries. He was responsible to foster a culture of economic analysis into USAID’s global health programming, to ensure value for money in terms of health impact, and to foster sustainable country-owned health systems. He represented USAID in discussions with other donor agencies in issues relating to health financing and health economics. He was the technical lead on an innovative and new $63.5 million OGAC funded initiative to increase country spending on HIV/AIDS services. He helped set up and provide technical leadership to the Practice Group on Health Financing. A main focus of his work at USAID was building internal capacity in health financing issues. He worked extensively on understanding how the rapid economic transition taking place in low and middle-income countries could be leveraged to increase their spending on health.
He is the technical lead for the Activity Based Costing and Management effort launched by OGAC in coordination with country governments, UNAIDS, the Global Fund, Gates Foundation, USAID, CDC and the US Treasury. The goal is to put in place a system that provides routine information on costs of activities that can then be used to optimize investments, drive efficiencies and inform the discussion on transition and sustainability. He also contributed to the discussions around long-term sustainability of PEPFAR programs and pushed for an “all of domestic and all of market” response to HIV. He currently chairs the Technical Working Group for Activity Based Costing and Management and the Technical Working Group studying the equity of the HIV response.
Dr. Nandakumar has provided support to the USAID health office in India, especially supporting them develop and implement approaches to deal with the Covid pandemic response in India. He assisted in establishing the first Blended Finance Facility for Pandemic Response, serves as the Chair of the Program Advisory Group for their flagship urban health project and supports the mission on a variety of issues including a more holistic approach to family health, fighting TB in India and building partnerships with private entities to deal with refractive error and eye problems in India. SAMRIDH, the Blended Finance Facility for Pandemic Response, received the state department’s social impact award last year. This is given to one initiative each year.
Dr. Nandakumar is an internationally recognized health-financing expert, known specifically for his work in resource tracking, National Health Accounts, health financing, and healthcare policy and research. A former Indian Administrative Services Officer, his thinking is framed by the importance of governance, driven by the need for greater accountability, arising from limited resources and a growing demand to demonstrate results. At the same time, he believes strongly that in our approach to health policy we need to move from “paternalism” to “empowering the consumer” and to a more holistic approach that looks at the wellbeing of the household. Designing health systems of the future will need us to take an “All of Domestic and All of Market” approach. After leaving the Indian Administrative Service Dr. Nandakumar was an Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, a Principal Associate with Abt Associates and a Senior Health Economist with RTI International. He took a leave of absence from Brandeis to work at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation as a Senior Program officer where he assisted with the development of the of the Global Health Delivery Area strategy, the India strategy and also represented the Foundation in international working groups. Dr. Nandakumar has also worked as a Director in the Emerging Markets Group at Deloitte Consulting.
His recent research has focused on factors that impact the risk of young women and adolescent girls to HIV; the impact of disability and HIV on Inter Personal Violence and health outcome of mothers and children and the positive externality of PEPFAR investments on mortality and other health system outcomes. His other research has focused on understanding how economic transition can be leveraged to increase country spending on health, the fungibility of donor assistance, factors affecting technology adoption in low and middle-income countries, the linkages between health expenditures and maternal and infant mortality. His other research has focused on understanding how economic transition can be leveraged to increase country spending on health, the fungibility of donor assistance, factors affecting technology adoption in low and middle-income countries, the linkages between health expenditures and maternal and infant mortality, and the relationship between growth in a country’s income and its healthcare spending.
He contributed to the World Bank led development of a Global Strategy for the institutionalization of National Health Accounts and the USAID led effort on developing a global strategy for Resource Tracking. He was among the experts who were invited to review and contribute to the development of the Resource Tracking component of the Accountability Commission on Women’s and Children’s Health. He has served on the Rockefeller Foundation’s Blue Ribbon Panel on scaling up Covid testing in the US and as part of MIT’s Pandemic Super Mind initiative.
Dr. Nandakumar has a Master of Science Degree in Mathematics from Bangalore University where he specialized in the General and Special Theory of Relativity and a PhD in Economics from Boston University. Dr. Nandakumar has worked and conducted research in several countries, including Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mongolia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Tonga, Western Samoa, United States, Sudan, Yemen and Zambia.
Dr. Nandakumar serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Innovation at Boston University’s School of Social Work.