Eelco Jacobs

Eelco Jacobs, MSc, PhD, is a senior policy advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam. He serves as the chair of KIT's Centre for Health Systems in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings, co-chair of KIT's employee's council, and member of the KIT Research Ethics Committee. He is a board member of the Netherlands Global Health Centre of Expertise (Kennis Centrum Global Health). With 18 years of experience in monitoring and evaluation, policy advice, capacity building, implementation research, and programme management, Eelco's expertise lies in aid effectiveness and the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, governance and institutional reform, the political economy of health reform, health financing, and results-based financing for health in low and middle-income countries.

Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, Armenia, Belarus, Thailand, South Sudan, Central African Republic, DR Congo, Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Ethiopia

• University Teaching Qualification (Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, 2023)
• Leadership programme, including ‘The 7 habits of highly effective people; The 5 choices of productivity; The 6 critical practices; Project Management Essentials; Unconscious bias and Trust’ (Franklin and Covey, 2020 - 2021)
• Results-Based Financing (Cordaid, 2014);
• Writing winning proposals (MDF training and consulting, 2014);
• Safety and security for travel and deployment overseas (Center for Safety and Development, Aug 2013).

• Obels, I., Coleman, H. L. S., Straetemans, M., Van Gurp, M. Lutwama, G. W., Jacobs, E. Determinants of health seeking behaviour in South Sudan: a cross-sectional household survey, BMC Public Health, 2024, 24:2367
• Alba, S., Jacobs, E., Kleipool, E., Gari, S., Paiman, F., Siddiqi, A.M., Hamid, N., Naeem, A., Saeedzai, S.A., Salehi, A., Safi, S., Arab, S., Manalai, P., Van Gurp, M., Gerretsen, B., Sondorp, E.; Third Party Monitoring for health in Afghanistan: the good, the bad and the ugly, BMJ Global Health, 2023, http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-013470
• Schots, M. A. S., Coleman, H. L. S., Lutwama, G. W., Straetemans, M., Jacobs, E., The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare access and utilisation in South Sudan: a cross-sectional mixed methods study, BMC Health Services Research, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08929-9
• Lutwama, G. W., Sartison, L. J., Onyango Yugi, J., Nehemiah, N., Gwang, Z. M., Akita Kibos, B., Jacobs, E., Health services supervision in a protracted crisis: A qualitative study into supportive supervision practices in South Sudan, BMC Health Services Research, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-08637-4
• Widdig, H., Tromp, N., Lutwama, G. W., Jacobs, E., The political economy of priority-setting in health in South Sudan: a case study of the Health Pooled Fund, International Journal for Equity in Health, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-022-01665-w
• Lutwama, G. W., Kok, M., Jacobs, E., An exploratory study of the barriers and facilitators to the implementation of community health worker programmes in conflict-affected South Sudan, Conflict and Health, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-021-00422-0
• Jacobs, E., Baez Camargo, C. Local health governance in Tajikistan: accountability and power relations at the district level, International Journal for Equity in Health, 2020, , https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-020-1143-7
• Jacobs, E., Bertone, M. P., Toonen, J., Akwataghibe, N., Witter, S., Performance-Based Financing, Basic Packages of Health Services and User-Fee Exemption Mechanisms: An Analysis of Health-Financing Policy Integration in Three Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings, Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40258-020-00567-8
• Jacobs, E., Hofman, I., Aid, social capital and local collective action: attitudes towards community-based health funds and village organizations in Rushan, Tajikistan, Community Development Journal, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsz005
• Jacobs, E., The politics of the basic benefit package health reforms in Tajikistan, Global Health Research and Policy, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1186/s41256-019-0104-4
• Bertone, M.P., Jacobs, E., Toonen, J., Akwataghibe, N., Witter, S., Performance-based financing in three humanitarian settings: principles and pragmatism, Conflict and Health, 2018., https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-018-0166-9
• Baez Camargo, C., Jacobs, E., Social Accountability and its Conceptual Challenges in “Accountable Governance for Development- Setting an Agenda beyond 2015”, International Conference on Governance and Public Service Transformation, 2013,
• Eelco Jacobs, Basic Public Services and Informal Power: An Analytical Framework for Sector Governance, Informal relations from democratic representation to corruption. Case studies from Central and Eastern Europe, 2011, ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-6173-7
• Baez-Camargo, C., Jacobs, E. A Framework to Assess Governance of Health Systems in Low Income Countries, Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper, 2011.