Umakant Dash is a Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Umakant specializes in Health Financing and Policy. He obtained his MA from the University of Hyderabad and PhD in Economics from IIT Kanpur. He also holds a Diploma in Health System Management from Tulane University, US. Prior to joining IIT Madras in 2004, he worked as a faculty member in the Economics & Finance and later as Group Leader of the Management Studies in the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (Rajasthan). He also spent a year in Utara University of Malaysia in Sintok as Visiting Professor in 2012.
His primary research interests are in the economics of health care and corporate finance. His research projects pursue questions of equity, efficiency and risk protection in Indian Health System and are fundeded by DFID, Rockefeller Foundation and World Bank. Umakant is a member of research consortium “RESYST” a five year research project led by Kara Hanson of LSHTM, London. His recent publications include, “Good Health at Low cost 25 years on: lessons for the future of health system strengthening”, Lancet (2013).
Dash has taught courses like Health Care Economics, Econometrics, Financial Economics, Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programmes, Macroeconomics at both undergraduate and post graduate level. He is aslo closely involved with the Government of Tamil Nadu and currently contributing a chapter on Health & Nutrition to the forthcoming Human Development Report of Tamil Nadu.
