Rory Nefdt BSc, MSc, PhD

Senior Advisor Health, Child and Community Health

UNICEF, New York

Title : PHC 2.0: from Alma-Ata to Astana

Rory Nefdt is the global Senior Advisor Health for Child and Community Health at UNICEF headquarters. His team helps to coordinate and support UNICEF's work to improve integrated Primary Health Care (PHC) at frontline health facilities and within communities to improve health outcomes for children and adolescents equitably. Operationalizing PHC at community level is a top priority, as is the management of the main childhood killer diseases of pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, HIV and TB. Work also focuses on digital technology data science and health systems strengthening, especially for PHC at community level. With the SDG approach of Survive and Thrive, his teams’ work portfolio has expanded to support the prevention of NCDs and related risks, developmental delays and disabilities, nurturing care and ECD, and prevention of road traffic injuries and drowning. Rory has over 20 years’ experience working on implementation of health programs, including in emergencies, with experience in 21 East and Southern African Countries, with in depth work in Zambia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Rory also worked at the UNICEF East and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) as the regional health specialist for malaria and community health (and emergency health focal point) and then as Chief of Health at the UNICEF Kenya Country Office before his reassignment to UNICEF in New York. A citizen of Zambia, Rory holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, with three years post-doctoral research experience at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine