Greater Oxford Area
Ian is an Associate Professor in Health Economics, specialising in environmental health. He has 18 years’ experience in the economics and financing of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in African and Asian countries. However, his current focus is new research interests in UK environmental health economics, including indoor air pollution and climate adaptation in housing. Academic papers can be found at https://bit.ly/google_scholar_IDR. His methodological interests are: measuring and valuing quality of life outcomes for economic evaluation (www.SanQoL.org); benefit-cost and cost-effectiveness analyses; and, preference elicitation using discrete choice experiments. Before joining academia, he established and grew a six-strong water team at Oxford Policy Management, leading WASH consulting projects for the World Bank, FCDO and UNICEF. Prior to that, he was in WaterAid’s policy team, working on a variety of research and advocacy including a period based in Timor-Leste.
My current focus is UK environmental health economics, including indoor air pollution and climate adaptation in housing. However, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in low-income settings remains a priority area, and I am actively seeking grants in this field. - For completed projects, see https://bit.ly/google_scholar_IDR - For ongoing projects, see https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/ross.ian
- Established and led a water portfolio at OPM, building a team of six WASH specialists - Won £5m of WASH research and policy assignments by competitive tender *****OPM water projects during 2012-17***** • Diagnostic and decision-making tools for Faecal Sludge Management in five cities, funded by World Bank-WSP, in partnership with WEDC (2014-16) • Support to World Bank-WSP WASH Poverty Diagnostics, in partnership with LSHTM, UFL and ODI (2015-16) • Evaluation of DFID's £75m results-based finance fund for WASH, including process evaluations and a randomised controlled trial (2014-18) • Value for Money and Sustainability in WASH Programmes (VFM-WASH). A six-country research project for DFID over two years, including six VFM studies and four nationally-representative household surveys focused on sustainability (2013-15) • Evaluation of the Government of Tanzania’s $1bn Water Sector Development Programme (2013) • Economic analysis of climate adaptation options for DFID WASH programmes in Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Malawi, in partnership with ODI (2013) • Climate finance and water security research for WaterAid, in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Zambia (2014-15) • Qualitative study of social and gender issues in WASH in Cabo Verde, funded by MCC (2013)
Worked for four years in WaterAid's policy team in the positions below, leading a variety of policy research and advocacy work. This included support to WaterAid's country programmes across Africa and Asia, as well as a secondment to Timor-Leste. Particular areas of focus included financial flows to the sector, improving the monitoring of WASH outcomes, child health, and the monitoring of political commitments. 2011-2011 - Policy Analyst (Monitoring & Accountability) 2010-2011 - Policy Advisor (secondment to Timor-Leste office) 2008-2010 - Researcher 2007-2008 - Research Assistant