Profile of Professor Jahangir A. M. Khan

Dr Jahangir A. M. Khan is a Professor of Health Economics at the Health Economics and Policy Unit of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine of Sahlgrenska Academy in the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He worked as a Health Economics Researcher at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, as the Head of Health Economics Unit of icddr,b in Bangladesh and as a senior lecturer at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. Professor Khan is currently an adjunct researcher of Karolinska Institutet and adjunct professor at James P Grant School of Public Health of Brac University in Bangladesh.

Jahangir’s research and academic experiences have significantly focused on several areas of health economics covering healthcare financing, economic evaluation of health interventions, determinants of utilisation of healthcare, equity in health & healthcare, illness and poverty as well as financial risk protection for Universal Health Coverage.

Jahangir published several articles in international journals and contributed to a number of policy documents nationally and internationally. Jahangir was a focal person of the first ever healthcare financing strategy of Bangladesh, developed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and he belonged to the expert group of the Monitoring and Evaluation tools of universal health coverage of Bangladesh.
He represented in different scientific committees and advisory committees of the national government (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in Bangladesh) and local government (Stockholm Health Region of Sweden) and international committee (Joint-Learning Network of Universal Health Coverage). He moderated several training sessions, conducted by the World Health Organization in Asia and Africa.


Sayem Ahmed
Dr. Sayem Ahmed is working as a Research Associate at the Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment (HEHTA) research group, University of Glasgow. He holds a PhD degree in health economics from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Before joining HEHTA, Ahmed worked at Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) in Vietnam, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) in UK and icddr,b in Bangladesh. He was involved as a consultant with the World Health Organization and The World Bank. He contributed as a member of the Bangladesh National Health Account working group at the Health Economics Unit of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Bangladesh, from 2012 to 2015.

Ahmed’s research deals with estimating health economic burden and economic evaluation of interventions targeting infectious diseases especially neglected tropical and vaccine-preventable ones. In addition, Ahmed conducted research on health insurance, healthcare financing, financial risk protection for universal health coverage and health systems efficiency in low and middle-income countries. He teaches health economics and supervises MSc and PhD students. He is currently working on several research studies at HEHTA undertaking economic evaluations alongside clinical trials.


S. M Abdullah

Graduating from the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka back in 2009, S M Abdullah has been actively involved in the research activities of ARK foundation since its inception. During the year of 2015 he completed M.Sc in Business and Economics from Lund University School of Economics and Management under Lund University, Sweden. His broad research interest focuses on the issues related to the field of health economics, international trade and macroeconomics. In the recent time he has been showing commitment along with ARK foundation for creating evidence-based research in the field of tobacco.

Currently, he is playing active role in Tobacco Control Capacity Program (TCCP) – Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) program under the banner of ARK foundation in collaboration with CRUK, London. Also, his involvement covers the implementation of several work packages under Addressing Smokeless Tobacco use and building Research capacity in South Asia (ASTRA) which is in collaboration with University of York, UK. Besides, Mr. Abdullah is also developing the research paper focusing “Tobacco Demand Analysis in Bangladesh using GATS Data” with the support from University of Illinois Chicago, USA. He is currently working as Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics in University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. His journey through the teaching career started back in 2010.

Mr. Abdullah has the expertise of developing and implementing quantitative research techniques. His keen interest relies on application and gradual development of different econometric model with the exploitation of primary and secondary data. He has firm belief that developing capacity would help to perform more explorative and extensive research in the field of tobacco economics which could result in more effective policy formulation targeting reduction in burden of disease from tobacco.

Mohammod Akbar Kabir

Mr. Akbar Kabir is currently working as an associate professor at the department of Economics, University of Dhaka. He has multidisciplinary background. He completed his Honors and Masters in Computer Science from the University of Dhaka. He also completed Masters in Environmental Economics from Dhaka School of Economics (Constituent element of the University of Dhaka). Early in his career he joined as a lecture in the department of Computer science of Dhaka City College. Then he started his career as a programmer at ITOCD department of Bangladesh Bank (the central Bank of Bangladesh).

In 2006, he joined as a lecturer at the department of economics, University of Dhaka. Akbar kabir published several articles in local and international journals. His research interest includes environmental valuation, health and environment, health financing and equity in health etc.

Md. Nazmul Hossain
Md. Nazmul Hossain is currently working as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Dhaka. He had completed his graduation in Economics in 2009 from the same department and later completed MSc in Mathematics from Western Illinois University, USA in 2018. His broad research interests focus on the field related to statistical analysis, applied econometrics and health economics.

Nazmul has been involved as a researcher from ARK Foundation, Dhaka on various projects related to health economics. Recently, he has been involved in the “Cigarette demand analysis in Bangladesh using GATS 2009 and 2017 data” and “Evaluating the effect of brand repositioning on cigarette tax revenue in Bangladesh” projects funded by the University of Illinois Chicago’s (UIC) Institute for Health Research and Policy. Currently, Nazmul is working on “Fiscal and regulatory mechanisms for promoting healthy diet” with the support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.

Md. Saiful Islam
Md. Saiful Islam is currently working as a Lecturer at Department of Economics, University of Dhaka. He started his career at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University in July 2019 as a Research Associate. He is experienced in conducting impact evaluations and is skilled in quantitative data collection and analysis, RCTs and field based experiments. His main areas of interest include development economics, public health, gender labour dynamics, migration, food security and digitisation.