Professor Anne Mills is Deputy Director & Provost and Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has a degree in history and economics from Oxford, a postgraduate qualification in health economics and a PhD from the London School of Economics. Professor Mills worked as an economist in the Ministry of Health in Malawi, a lecturer at the LSHTM and spent four years in a joint post with LSE. From 1990-2010, Professor Mills was Director of the Health Economics and Financing Programme, which was supported by a variety of research grants from funders such as DFID, the Wellcome Trust, EU and WHO. In 2006 she became Head of the Faculty of Public Health and Policy, in 2011 she took up the position of Vice-Director, and in 2014 her role was renamed Deputy Director and Provost. In 2014, Professor Mills became a Fellow of the Royal Society and was made a Dame in the 2015 New Year’s Honours.
Professor Mills’ main research interests are:
- Issues concerned with the financing and organisation of health care in low and middle income countries. She is interested in the impact of different systems of finance and provision on demand, utilization, equity and efficiency, and particularly in exploring the relevance of provider markets and contracting-out in various developing country contexts. She is also interested in health insurance systems, particularly their relationship with and impact on the private health sector.
- The economics of tropical disease control, especially malaria. This extends beyond work on the cost-effectiveness of malaria control to an interest in how activities in the private sector affect malaria control and can be re-shaped to be more supportive.
- General issues of how to encourage the use of economic thinking and analysis in decision making. She has been active in making economic evaluation techniques accessible to a non-specialist audience, for example through supporting the development of guidelines and manuals. She has also been heavily involved in initiatives to build capacity in health economics through supporting the efforts of agencies such as WHO TDR.
Until recently Professor Mills chaired the Board of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, which is based in WHO. She was a member of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, and co-chaired Working Group 1 of the High Level Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems. She was President of the International Health Economics Association for 2012-13, and is currently a Board member of Health Systems Global. Professor Mills is a member of the joint Wellcome Trust, DFID, MRC, ESRC Health Systems Research initiative funding panel.
