Biography

Dr. Sania Nishtar; SI, FRCP, Ph.D Pakistan

Dr. Sania Nishtar holds a Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and a Ph.D., from Kings College, London.

Her work and experience in global health, international development, humanitarian assistance and governance, both nationally and internationally, span many dimensions, which range from institution building, public policy, research, advocacy and implementation. She a member of the civil society and has experience working in the government at the Cabinet level in addition to being a physician.

Establishing institutions: Sania Nishtar is the founder of many institutions in Pakistan. She left a career as a physician cardiologist to establish an NGO think-tank, Heartfile, which is the most powerful health policy voice and catalyst for health reform in Pakistan and is recognized as a model for replication in other developing countries. She is the founder of Heartfile Health Financing, an award winning access to treatment humanitarian initiative. She is also the founder of Pakistan’s Health Policy Forum. During her tenure as Federal Minister in Pakistan’s Interim Government, she was instrumental in establishing Pakistan’s Ministry of Health.

International development: Sania Nishtar is widely respected as a global health expert. She serves as an advisor to the World Health Organization on various initiatives and is a member of many expert working groups and task forces of WHO in areas spanning health systems, chronic diseases and public private engagement. She currently co-chairs the high-level WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity. She has led the drafting of many international declarations/statements for the World Health Organization and frequently keynotes at and chairs their events. Her ideas for new health systems designs for developing country mixed health systems have received wide traction and acclaim.

Sania Nishtar is a faculty member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is a regular plenary speaker and/or moderator for WEF’s events. She has been a member of the Global Agenda Councils of the World Economic Forum, since its inception.

She is additionally a member of many other international commissions and initiatives, including the Rockefeller Foundation’s Planetary Health Commission, Harvard University and The Lancet’s Pain and Palliative Care Commission and Stockholm Resilience Center’s EAT initiative.

She has previously served as a member of the boards of the International Union for Health Promotion, the World Heart Federation, WHO’s Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, the Aspen Institute’s Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health, Chair of GAVI’s Evaluation Advisory Committee and a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Previously, she has chaired the award-wining World Heart Day campaign in its founding years, the 'Go Red for Women' campaign and the Expert Panel on Women and Heart Disease. She is a regular plenary speaker, chair or

1 moderator at global health meetings and a part of organizing major international conferences.

Sania Nishtar is the Chair of the Health Committee of the Aman-ki-Asha initiative, a campaign for peace between India and Pakistan, for which she has convened several meetings and negotiated declarations. As a member of the Pakistan Chapter of Aspen Institute’s Partners for a New Beginning as well as member of the Global Advisory Council of the Pakistan American Foundation and the US-Muslim Engagement Initiative she has been advocating for broader US-Pakistan engagement, towards improving social outcomes.

Government of Pakistan: Sania Nishtar served as Federal Minister of the Government of Pakistan during the 2013 caretaker government as Minister for Science and Technology, Education and Trainings and Information Technology and Telcom. She also had responsibility as focal person for health. During her term, she was instrumental in establishing Pakistan's Ministry of Health, which she had been advocating for in her civil society role. At the conclusion of her term she published Handover Papers, voluntarily submitting herself for accountability, an initiative which received wide acclaim for setting a new benchmark in transparency.

Sania Nishtar serves on the governing bodies of many public sector organizations in the domains of health, science, and socio-economic development. She is currently a member of the National Commission on Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance’s Economic Advisory Council and Planning Commission’s Advisory Committee. She is a board member of many public sector organizations, including Pakistan’s largest cash transfer social protection system, and is a Member Senate of the National Defense University. She has served previously as a member of many other public sector boards.

Sania Nishtar has, on several occasions, contributed her time pro bono, for various ministries, and as such has authored Pakistan’s first health reform vision, Pakistan’s first compendium of health statistics, and the country’s first national public health plan for non-communicable diseases.

Civil society advocacy role in Pakistan: Sania Nishtar is a key health policy voice in Pakistan, She is a member of many boards, advisory groups and task forces and a voice to catalyze change at the broader governance level in Pakistan. She is currently a member of the board of Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency and the Pakistan Center for Philanthropy. She has previously been on the board of the Trust for Voluntary Organizations.

She makes regular appearances in national conferences and discourses on health, governance, and women’s leadership in Pakistan—in many events as a keynote speaker. In addition she is also a faculty member of the National School of Public Policy, Pakistan Administrative Staff College, National Management College, National Defense University and other academic institutes in Pakistan.

Humanitarian initiative: Sania Nishtar has implemented her ideas of health systems restructuring in the innovative health system model: Heartfile Health Financing, which she currently also runs. The program has broader health systems reform and humanitarian objectives. In terms of the former, it aims to bring greater transparency and effectiveness in social protection for health and in relation to the latter, as a

2 humanitarian initiative, it enables access of poor patients to financing for critically needed lifesaving surgery, without which they would be forced to forego care or become impoverished/indebted in the process of accessing care. Since inception, her program has provided a lifeline to more than 4000 marginalized individuals including women and refugees, enabling access to lifesaving surgery. She has demonstrated the values of using simple technologies, such as mobile phones to reform systems and improve outcomes.

Research and publications：

Sania Nishtar is the author of 6 books. Her latest, Choked Pipes, published by the Oxford University Press in 2010 is used as a post-graduate textbook. Recently, a documentary has been made on the book by an award winning British film director. The book is also used for parliamentary briefings and capacity building. She has also authored several book chapters, and is a regular Op-ed contributor in The News International, Huffington Post and has also contributed in the Wall Street Journal and Project Syndicate.

She is extensively published in peer reviewed journals, including The Lancet and British Medical Journal with more than 100 peer review articles. She has also led the Pakistan Lancet Series on Health Reform. She is a member of Advisory Boards of many international journals, including The Lancet Global Health.

Awards: Sania Nishtar has been decorated both nationally and internationally. She graduated from medical school as the best graduate with 16 gold medals, a college record, which remains unbroken to date. Her international awards include the Rockefeller Foundation’s Global Innovation Award, the Medical Mission Hall of Fame accolade and the European Society Population Science Award. She has been listed by the International Biographical Centre, Cambridge in its listing of Top 100 professionals and 2000 outstanding intellectuals of the 21st century. In addition, the agency named her as the International Health Professional of the Year for two years (2007 and 2010) and as a Woman of the year in 2010. Biographical Centre, Cambridge has also awarded her the International Order of Merit, the Ultimate Achiever Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the International Hippocrates Award for Medical Achievement.

The American Biographical Institute awarded her the 2009 Women of the Year Pakistan, the Gold Medal for Pakistan, the Order of Merit Representing Pakistan, the Legion of Honor in addition to awarding her the Woman of the Year in medicine and healthcare medal. She has been named as the top 20 Women Scientists by Muslim Science, and is the recipient of Pakistan’s Sitara-i-Imtiaz.

Sania Nishtar, currently lives in Islamabad, Pakistan with her husband and two children, aged 27 and 22. She travels extensively in relation to her work internationally and remains deeply involved in various initiatives in Pakistan.

A detailed profile can be accessed at www.sanianishtar.info

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