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Gordon Abekah-Nkrumah PhD

Senior Researcher and Consultant

Gordon is an academic at the Department of Public Administration and Health Services Management of the University of Ghana Business School. Before joining the University of Ghana, Gordon worked as an accountant in the private sector and later, a public financial management and IT consultant in Ghana’s health sector. He is also a faculty on the Global Network for Advance Schools of Management (GNAM) online and classroom-based masters programme coordinated by the Yale School of Management. Gordon’s research focuses on understanding contemporary development policy issues, with particular interest in the economics of health systems and health financing. Beside health systems, Gordon’s research also focuses on other important development policy issues such as poverty and inequality, food security governance, education and urbanisation. Beside the University of Ghana, Gordon is currently a researcher with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) based in Nairobi, Kenya, the International Growth Centre (IGC) based in the London School of Economics in the UK and an affiliate of the African Health Economics Association (AfHEA).

As a researcher, Gordon has over 34 publications to his credit and has attended and presented papers in several dozen academic conferences. He has also been the recipient of research grants from both local and international funding organisations to carry out research on development policy related issues. As part of his research portfolio, Gordon has also been key in coaching and mentoring a team of young researchers, particularly interested in issues related to development policy and management both at the masters and doctoral level. Gordon has also gained substantial experience by leading several research and consultancy projects on health policy related issues such as public financial management, evidence-based policy and practice, health sector governance, public expenditure tracking surveys, holistic assessments and aid effectiveness in the health sector, politics of health financing, universal health coverage (UHC) etc.  for Development Partners such as WFP, FAO, UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO, DFID, DANIDA, Royal Netherlands Embassy, WAHO and the WorldBank. 

At the micro level, Gordon has strong experience at the health facility level, having played a key role in the DANIDA financed Health Sector Improvement Programme (HSIP) in Ghana, which covered all health facilities in the Upper-West region in the mid 2000s, as well as using the Peer Participatory Rapid Health Appraisal for Action (PPRHAA) tool to assess the performance of health facilities belonging to the Christian Health Association of Ghana. In addition, Gordon has recently developed and initiated the implementation of a health facility transformational programme (HFP). As part of this Programme, Gordon works with health facilities of diverse size and ownership to commence their transformational journey; including strategy formulation, capacity building and strategy implementation. Currently several hospitals in Ghana have benefited from the implementation of the health facilities transformational programme. Beside the HFP, Gordon has also developed a portfolio of capacity building programmes to improve the capacity of healthcare providers to improve their services and consequently their market share.