dr. IEJ (Igna) Bonfrer

Biography

Dr. Igna Bonfrer is Associate Professor of Global Health Economics at Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management.

Together with a brilliant team including PhD candidates from India, Peru, Uganda, Zambia and the Netherlands, I aim to do impactful research and provide some of the knowledge base necessary to improve health care systems across low- and middle-income countries. I am particularly interested in health care financing and have studied this while at the University of Oxford, Erasmus University Rotterdam and during my postdoc at Harvard University. 

My work has been published in among others The British Medical Journal, Health Affairs, Social Science & Medicine and PLOS Global Public Health. An overview of my publications can be found on Google Scholar.

I try to create a supportive and friendly environment for outstanding impactful research and received the "Best PhD Supervisor Award 2024".

I coordinate both the BSc course Global Challenges in Health & Behaviour and the MSc course Global Health Economics (average student evaluation 4.5 out of 5). Topics include “causal evaluation of health care financing reforms”, “decolonizing global health” and “making a career in global health”.

I am Director of the Rotterdam Global Health Initiative, the multi-disciplinary global health research and education network of the Erasmus University Rotterdam and those who have sought our expertise on health and health care in low- and middle-income countries, with 250+ members. www.eur.nl/en/rghi

I have been asked to share my expertise with the World Health Organization and several NGOs. 

I serve as Academic Editor for PLOS Global Public Health.

I did my post-doc with the Harvard Global Health Institute.

I received research funding from various competitive sources including the Rubicon Fellowship from the Dutch Research Council, World Health Organization, the EU's Marie Curie CoFund, and the Erasmus Trustfund. I was honoured with the Nautilus Award for outstanding contribution from the University of Oxford and with the Prof. H.W. Lambers Prize from the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

An illustration of our earlier work for pregnant women in India: https://youtu.be/0bBNsm6t3Tc