Geetanjali Sharma

Towards a better understanding of regulatory mixes in health-care related task shifting: A comparative analysis of the United Kingdom and Canada.

Email: Geetanjali.sharma@vuw.ac.nz

Supervisors: Professor Jeroen van der Heijden and Dr Flavia Donadelli

Profile

Geetanjali is a qualified lawyer, certified cross culture negotiator / mediator and policy consultant by practice. Her core skills include governance research, policy advisory, legal due diligence, compliance training and stakeholder engagement. Having worked at the intersection of law and public policy in government, for profit and not for profit settings, her sectors of interest include health, education, environment, economic growth for well-being and regulation of social technology.

Qualifications

• Fellow, International Innovation Corps, Harris Public Policy, University of Chicago, United States of America
• Becker Law Scholar, Masters in International & Comparative Laws (LL.M.), University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Gold medalist, Dual under-graduate qualification in Law & Humanities (B.A. LL.B.), National Law University, Jodhpur, India
• Scholar, Directed Studies and Summer Program, Private International Law Course, Hague Academy of International Law, The Hague, Netherlands
• Certification in Cross Culture Negotiation and Mediation (40 hours training), Bridge Mediation LLC, San Diego, California

Research interests

As an embedded policy consultant at the Department of Health, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare in the state of Karnataka, India, Geetanjali worked on designing the world’s largest publicly funded health insurance scheme as well as universalizing access towards diverse maternal and childcare programs. Being appointed in the legislative drafting team for pesticides legislation in India, she interacted with diverse industry associations and non-state partners. Later on, as part of the policy advisory team in India’s largest law firm, she worked on cutting edge issues of health technology and systems design, advising world’s largest technology companies.

Working in diverse teams within and across the government, donors such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, multi-national companies and several grassroot advocacy organizations, motivated her to conduct holistic in-depth policy research, that bridges the gap between research and practice.

Having witnessed the emerging realities of modern-day policy making in a developing country such as India, she is currently interested in the area of hybrid institutional regulation and diverse policy mixes, using professional healthcare regulation as her case-study. Her research aims to explore various mechanisms through which different forms of governments mix and use various policy instruments in regulating healthcare professionals to attain regulatory / societal goals. Her research has become even more relevant, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, where healthcare has emerged as the core policy agenda for almost all nations.