The 2026 call for IHP Correspondents was released as part of the IHP Network initiative to provide an opportunity to young researchers and other change agents from different regions and continents to contribute to the global health policy & HPSR discourse and participate in setting the agenda, by sharing their ideas and opinions in the form of blogs and featured articles. There are 6 correspondents in total this year.
Duha Shellah (MD) is Vice Chair, WHO EMRO Youth Council; Chair, Public Health in Emergencies & Disasters Working Group, World Federation of Public Health Associations; elected member, IAP (InterAcademy Partnership) Policy Advice Committee; Founder & Chairwoman, The Researchist Organization; and Coordinator, Medical & Health Sciences Division, Palestine Academy for Science & Technology.
Eunice Lobo is a public health researcher with a doctoral degree from Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on early childhood development and caregiving environments in urban poor settings in South India, with a focus on how social and economic conditions shape caregiving practices and early developmental outcomes.
Pratishtha Singh is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Australia, researching how mobility systems can be made safer and violence-free for women and gender-diverse people.
Relindis Ma-gang Tapang (PhD) is a health and development economist specialising in
health financing, health system inequalities, and gender disparities in health and labour
markets, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. She holds a PhD in International Studies
from the University of Tokyo, where she received the Outstanding Doctoral Achievement
Award. She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo and a parttime lecturer in Japan. She is also a 2025 Fellow of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS). Her research examines access to care, financial protection, and maternal health outcomes, and she has previously worked on the World Bank–supported Performance-Based Financing Project in Cameroon.
Dr Sabu K U is a public health researcher and practitioner based in India, with over a decade of experience in health policy and systems research, community-based research, and Indigenous and climate-vulnerable contexts. His work focuses on health equity, food systems, agrobiodiversity, and the ethical and governance dimensions of climate–health research, with extensive field engagement in South India. He is an alumnus of the Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) 2022 cohort.
Shubham Gupta is a public health enthusiast working at the crossroads of health systems research and evaluation sciences. Trained in history, social sciences, social work, and developmental economics, he works across South Asia and West Africa with the aim of strengthening health systems through utility-driven analytics and multidisciplinary thinking. He is also an Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) Fellow (2024) and an Indian Health Policy and Systems Research Fellow (2023).