About Us

He currently serves as a Government Advisory Group member for the Financing Alliance for Health (FAH). Koku recently served as a Director of Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation for the Ghana Health Service. He has over 3 decades of experience in senior health management in Ghana including 16 years as District Medical Officer and 8 years as a Regional Director of Health Services. Prior to that, he worked as the National Coordinator of Ghana’s Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) Initiative that revolutionized Primary Health Care in Ghana’s Health System Performance. Koku has been involved in several initiatives to promote health systems strengthening, policy research and implementation science for evidence-based decision-making in Ghana and several other countries. A feat that has seen him win several awards both nationally and internationally for his contribution to the health sector and the public health community.

Aparna is an experienced health policy and financing specialist with 15+ years of experience working with country governments in the design and implementation of health policy and financing reforms. She is skilled at budget analysis, resource mobilization, costing, stakeholder engagement, strategy development, and program management. Currently, Aparna serves as a Principal Program Manager, Payment Innovation at Blue Shield, California where she is primarily involved in the designing and testing of new, value-based provider payment models in the California health system. She also a member of the Government Advisory Group at FAH. Previously, Koku has served as a Senior Health Care Financial Analyst for the Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Services Department, a Senior Advisor for Zenysis Technologies. She also led the economics and financing portfolio at UCSF's Malaria Elimination Initiative that included the development of national investment cases to increase domestic funding for malaria elimination and transitions planning assessments to support countries to become independent from donor aid. She has also served as the Director for Health of the Public Finance Division of the South African National Treasury for 8 years. Here, she managed the public sector health budget and informed decisions on health policy and financing. She has also worked for the Namibian Ministry of Health, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), USAID’s Health Policy Initiative, and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Aparna holds a Master’s in health policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health, a Masters in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bachelor's degree in Development Studies from UC Berkeley.