Midori de Habich

Midori de Habich brings 25 years of experience leading and implementing development activities in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), including two years serving as Minister of Health, and 10 years as a Chief of Party of USAID-funded projects in her native country of Peru.

de Habich is the technical director for the Abt-led, USAID-financed Local Health System Sustainability Project (LHSS), which supports government efforts to improve access to quality care for poor, underserved, and socially excluded populations in LMICs. de Habich helps country teams to think creatively about new solutions and approaches. She ensures that the project’s collaborative approach to working with local government partners is applied wherever LHSS works. She also oversees the global technical expert pool, coordinates cross-project learning, and is responsible for the quality assurance of technical approaches and major project deliverables.

In her 10 years as COP for four successive Abt-led and USAID-financed health projects, de Habich made lasting contributions to Peru’s progress towards UHC through her efforts to secure the Political Parties Agreement on Health and the Universal Health Insurance Law and to the development of tools and methodologies for decentralization and health insurance reform that have been incorporated into government policies.

As Peru’s Minister of Health, de Habich led comprehensive health reform efforts to extend financial coverage to 15 million citizens.

In addition to Peru, de Habich has advised governments in Bangladesh, Barbados, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guyana, Kenya, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname. As chair of the South American Council of Health, she worked with and represented Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Her extensive experience operating within the global health systems strengthening (HSS) community on matters related to LMIC includes serving as Co-Chair of the World Health Organization Universal Health Coverage (WHO-UHC) 2030 and as a member of the WHO Health Financing Group. She participated on the WHO High-level Mission to advise the Government of Kenya on UHC.

Expertise

• Health Systems Strengthening
• Health financing
• Health decentralization
• Consensus building for health reform
• Public-private partnerships

Key Projects

• World Health Organization Universal Health Coverage (WHO-UHC) 2030
• Health Financing Group
• Global Public Goods TWG
• Health Policy Reform Project
• Results for Development (R4D)
• Steering Committee of 2030 Water Resources Group (World Bank)
• Instituto de Estudios Peruanos

Publications

• Habich, M. Roadmap for the implementation of health reform in Peru. Inter-American Development Bank. 2016
• Habich, M. Advances in the implementation of health reform laws. World Bank. 2015
• Habich, M. and M. Madueño. Willingness of medium and high income independent workers to pay for health insurance. ¿Is there demand potential? CIES, Lima 2004.
• Habich, M. Evolution of public spending 1980-1990. Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima 1992.