#11 The community health and development sector: what can COVID-19 teach us?

Kaaren Mathias is a public health physician recently returned to New Zealand after 15 years working in community health and development in India. She is founder-director of the community mental health project, Burans, in Uttarakhand and has worked for over a decade with the Emmanuel Hospital Association (www.eha-health.org). She completed her PhD with Umea Universitet in Sweden in 2016 and her research interests around community mental health include youth resilience, community participation, social inclusion, gender, equity and health system strengthening.

Kaaren is a board member of Health Systems Global, and holds adjunct research positions at the University of Otago, as well as Umea University and the Nossal Institute at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Nathan Grills (MBBS, MPH, DPHIL, DPH) is a Public Health Physician at the Nossal Institute for Global health, University of Melbourne. His work focuses on disability largely in the context of community settings in India. He established a number of disability projects and networks in rural north India. Nathan researches disability measurement and inclusion and has a personal experience of disability through caring for his daughter. In the past Nathan has extensively researched the role of FBOs in responding to HIV and disability (DPhil, Oxford University). He has undertaken community health work in PNG, Fiji, Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, Thailand and Mozambique.