Anna is a health systems researcher in her fourth year of the Population Health Sciences PhD program in the Department of Global Health. Her research aims to generate evidence to improve health systems in low-income settings for better services and better health. Collaborating with researchers in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Haiti, she examines how to measure health system quality, how high quality care is (or is not) equitably distributed across a population, and how to improve health system quality. Maternal and newborn health and primary health care systems are two key areas of focus. She uses methods from econometrics, implementation science, and geographic analysis in this research.

Anna's dissertation research examines health system quality improvement through a complex adaptive systems lens. In her first paper, she evaluated the impact of performance-based financing initiative on neonatal health outcomes in five Sub-Saharan African countries and found no significant impact on either mortality or birthweight. Her second paper examines a national primary care improvement initiative in Tanzania and identifies key contextual factors that supported quality improvement. Finally, her third paper zooms in to examine how providers may influence one another in providing quality care to mothers and newborns in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. Cumulatively, this work demonstrates the challenges and opportunities for improving health systems in the future. 

Moving forward, Anna is interested further identifying gaps in the equity of quality care, gaining maximal insights from countries' health management information systems, and applying her health system quality lens to care in the United States. She is also committed to decolonizing global health research and creating equitable and mutually benefical research partnerships. 

Anna received her Bachelors in Public Policy and Global Studies in 2012 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her Masters of Science in Global Health and Population in 2016 from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she coordinated the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the SDG Era and supported research on healthcare quality and efficiency with Mathematica Policy Research. 

Contact

Department of Global Health and Population
Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
665 Huntington Ave., Building 1, 11th Floor
Boston, MA 02115
agage@hsph.harvard.edu