Rifat Atun is Professor of International Health Management at Imperial College London and Head of the Healthcare Management Group. Between 2008 and 2012 he was a member of the Executive Management Team of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as the Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation Cluster.
At Imperial, Rifat founded and led the Centre for Health Management: a multidiciplinary research group involved in international and UK based research programmes using multimethods approaches to explore how contextual and health systems factors influence the adoption and diffusion of complex health innovations (for example communicable disease control programmes for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, primary health care reforms, and novel healthcare technologies). He has published widely in the Lancet, PLoS Medicine, Lancet Infectious Diseases, BMJ, Journal of Infectious Diseases, AIDS, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and PloS One.
Rifat has worked extensively with the World Bank, World Health Organization, the UK Department for International Development on design, implementation and evaluation of health system reform programmes. He has led research and consultancy projects for a number of leading organizations such as Pfizer Inc., the Vodafone Group, Hofmann La Roche, PA Consulting, and Tata Consulting Services. Rifat has advised a number of governments in Europe, Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East.
Rifat was the Founding Director of the MSc in International Health Management, BSc in Management and Medical Science, and Founding Co-Director of the Masters in Public Health Programme at Imperial College. He was on the board of the Institute of Systems and Synthetic Biology at Imperial College. Rifat has founded and has been a director of Imperial College spin out companies operating in areas of health informatics and biotechnology.
Rifat was member of the Strategic Technical Advisory Group of the World Health Organization for Tuberculosis and chaired the WHO Task Force on Health Systems and Tuberculosis Control. Between 2006-08 he was a Member of the Advisory Committee for WHO Research Centre for Health Development in Japan. He currently Chairs the STOP TB Partnership Coordinating Board and is a member of the MRC Global Health Group as the MRC Infections and Immunity Board representative. He is a member of the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board and a member of the Advisory Board for Merck for Mothers.
Rifat is a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians UK.
