Dr Awad Mataria

Dr Awad Mataria is the Director of Universal Health Coverage/Health Systems at the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean and Acting WHO Representative in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Dr Mataria has more than 20 years of experience in health systems, health economics and health financing. For the last 15 years, he has supported countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region reform their health systems, with a focus on health financing reforms to facilitate universal health coverage based on a primary health care approach.

Dr Mataria has a longstanding interest in working in fragile and conflict-affected settings. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he became increasingly interested in clarifying the conceptual linkages between universal health coverage and health security through an essential public health functions lens.

Dr Mataria has a PhD in health economics and a Masters in health systems analysis. His undergraduate degree is in pharmacy.

Dr Mataria’s areas of expertise include: universal health coverage; health systems financing and organization; social health insurance; economics in health care priority setting; measuring the benefits of health care using stated preferences techniques; the economic evaluation of health care interventions and national health accounts.

Dr Mataria has written extensively for journals, including the Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics and The Lancet, and is a co-editor of the textbook Making Health Systems Work in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Fluent in English, French and Arabic (mother-tongue), he has taken part in numerous international and regional conferences.