Fabio Castaño, MD, MPH, is a widely recognized expert in global health. His consulting work is focused on strengthening health systems and expanding public-private partnerships to accelerate the use of technological innovations in public health to increase universal access to health. He is currently a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and USAID, and Senior Vice President for Governance and Leadership with Akadimi Foundation.
Dr. Castaño is a physician from the Colombian School of Medicine, El Bosque University, Colombia. He has a Master’s in Public Health with an emphasis in Community Health and Health Systems from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and studies in Health Management and Quality Improvement. He received a USAID Andean Peace Scholarship and a Fulbright Scholarship. He is a member of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and has served on the boards of various NGOs.
Dr. Castaño has worked for more than 25 years designing, managing, and evaluating highly complex public health projects in more than 30 countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. He has worked in programs of the United States Agency for Development (USAID), United Nations agencies (UNFPA, UNDP, UNESCO), the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and various international NGOs such as EngenderHealth, Planned Parenthood, Management Sciences for Health (MSH), and Pathfinder International.
Working as Regional Director for East Africa and Latin America for MSH, Dr Castaño managed a $300 million portfolio of projects to strengthen health systems including infrastructure programs, human resource development, quality of services and strengthening of management, leadership, and governance in health institutions. Also, with MSH as Global Technical Lead, he supported Ministries of Health expand health sector reform and decentralization. For example: in Honduras, through the Local Technical Support Unit Project (ULAT); in Liberia, through Rebuilding Basic Health Services (RBHS); in Malawi with the District Health System Strengthening and Quality Improvement (DHS); in Peru, through Healthy Communities and Municipalities (CMSII); in Uganda, with the STRIDES for Family Health project, through a performance-based financing approach. He also led technical assistance to Salud Mesoamerica (the Mesoamerica Health Initiative, a 12 million dollars project), collaborating closely with the IDB and Ministries of Health in 6 countries to advance the implementation of public policies and improve the quality of primary healthcare including maternal and child health, reproductive health, and surveillance of infectious diseases through more than 200 hospitals. He has supervised the development of research on health systems management and financing in African and Latin American countries to formulate innovative evidence-based strategies for policy change, and health sector programming and investments.
In Colombia, his country of origin, Dr. Castaño has been an advisor to the Ministry of Health, Director of Health for the National Rehabilitation Plan of the Presidency of the Republic, and Advisor to the First Lady. With Universidad El Bosque, he was Director of Community Medicine and established several graduate programs in Family Health and Epidemiology. He is currently visiting professor at the University of Alicante (Spain) and AMRITA University (Kerala, India).