Prof. John Ele-Ojo Ataguba is an Associate Professor and Director of the Health Economics Unit, University of Cape Town.  He was the interim South African Research Leader (Chair) in Health and Wealth (2018-2020).  He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Health Economics Association (iHEA).  He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Health and Healthcare, a research fellow for the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) network and was a Mellon Mandela Fellow (20016/17) at Harvard University, USA.  John has a PhD in Economics from the University of Cape Town and he has several years of research and teaching experience in many African countries. 

Currently, he teaches topics in health financing, quantitative health economics and applied microeconomics to graduate students at the University of Cape Town.  John is the recipient of several competitive awards, both locally and internationally and he has also served as an advisor nationally, and to international agencies including the World Health Organization. His research interests in economics include poverty, inequality, equity in health and health care, social determinants of health, health financing and the economics of ageing. He has published widely in the field of health economics, and he serves as an editorial board member of the journal Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, and BMC Health Services Research.