Delilah and Joanne

For over a decade, Delilah has been the Chief Policy Planning Officer and Gender Focal Point at the Solomon Islands Ministry of Health and Medical Services. She has represented the ministry in several gender forums, including at the Convention on Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). She also conducted a gender equity assessment of the health sector and developed a gender equality strategy.

Through her volunteer work, Delilah succeeded in gaining international funding and technical support for food safety and handling training for women street vendors and in mobilising her community to clean up their city. She also organised a fundraiser for the 2012 Japan tsunami victims.

Delilah would like to introduce economic evaluations into the health ministry and to train and support staff to undertake regular evaluations. She plans to target a program - such as the vector-borne diseases or malaria programs - that is well resourced but requires proper assessment and evaluation to determine its impact.

Upon her return to Solomon Islands, she intends to empower and upskill her team so that they adopt a cost-effectiveness approach. She would like to ensure health priorities are justified and evidence-based so that the ministry is able to properly determine its resource priorities and make more informed policy and programming decisions. She also would like to advocate for more women representatives at all decision-making levels.

Joanne is a senior health economist with extensive international experience in economics, research and policy analysis. She currently holds a senior research fellow position at Macquarie University's Centre for the Health Economy.

Joanne has worked at the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Ontario Treasury (Canada), AMP Capital Investors (Australia), the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (Australia), and KPMG Australia. She was the Chief Health Economist at Primary Health Care Limited and the Principal Advisor at the New South Wales Treasury.

Joanne's experience in policy analysis includes senior-level briefings, economic modelling and the preparation of policy research documents.

Her professional experience is augmented by an economics doctorate and strong skills in applied econometric methods for policy evaluation.