RHINO is managed through a Secretariat, hosted at JSI, and by a Board made up of technical experts from around the world.
Jean-Pierre de Lamalle, Chairman of the Board
Dr. de Lamalle is a co-founder of the 
“Agence Européenne pour le Développement et la Santé” (AEDES) in Brussels, a member of the AEDES executive committee, and currently the head of the AEDES technical department. In the latter capacity, he is responsible for coordinating a team of technical experts and overseeing training activities, operational research, and technical publications.
Dr. de Lamalle has more than 25 years of experience in Health System Strengthening, at all levels, from healthcare delivery, health services planning and management to national health policy development in primarily low and middle income countries in addition to European countries.
Dr. de Lamalle has been involved in supporting the design and the management of Routine Health Information Systems in locations, including the Salomon Islands, Cambodia, Chad, Comoros, Burundi, Madagascar, Togo, and the Ivory Coast. He is the editor and a co-author of a book on Health Information Systems, published in French in 1996 and 2005 and in English in 2011. He collaborated with the University of Brussels to create a course on Health Information Systems. He also collaborated with Health Metrics Network as a member of the core team of the Health Metrics Network- Technical Support Partnership (HMN-TSP). He is a member of the advisory committee for the development of a curriculum on basic concepts and practice for Routine Health Information Systems, developed jointly by MEASURE Evaluation (funded by the United States Agency for International Development [USAID] and based at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and the Health Statistics and Information Systems Division of the World Health Organization (WHO), in Geneva, Switzerland, in collaboration with experts at the universities of Brussels, Oslo, and Queensland; the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (INSP), in Mexico City; the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), in New Delhi; and the Agence Européenne pour le Développement et la Santé (AEDES), in Brussels.
Before joining the Board of RHINO, Dr. de Lamalle was a member of its technical advisory group (TAG). He was elected as Chairman of the Board and President of RHINO in January 2017. Dr. de Lamalle is a Medical Doctor from the University of Liège (Belgium) with a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University (USA) and a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the Tropical Institute of Antwerp (Belgium). He was a visiting lecturer at the Tropical Institute of Antwerp (Belgium) in 1989 and in the Public Health Master degree jointly offered by the University of Louvain la Neuve and the University of Brussels (Belgium) between 1989 and 1996.
Dr. Francisca Ayodeji Akala, MD, MPH, MSc
Dr. Ayo Akala, a Nigerian national, is a Senior Health Specialist with 
the World Bank’s Global Practice for Health, Nutrition and Population where she currently leads regional and national health systems and public health tasks. Since joining the World Bank as a young professional in 2000, she has worked on health and human development issues in countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Caribbean regions. These include working on health management information systems at the sub-national, national and regional level as part of the Bank-financed projects. She has also authored the Bank’s regional strategy on HIV/AIDS for the Middle East and North Africa Region and other public health articles, commentaries and reports.
Prior to joining the World Bank, Dr. Akala practiced clinical medicine; worked on national public health initiatives including primary health care development and polio eradication as a private consultant; and worked as a health specialist with Médecins Sans Frontières on urban slum health issues all in Nigeria.
Dr. Akala graduated from medical school at the University of Ibadan, College of Medicine, Nigeria in 1991. She also holds a Master in Public Health degree from the University of Lagos, Nigeria and a Master in Health Services Management degree from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK as a Chevening Scholar.
William Heisel
William Heisel is the Director of Global Engagement at the Institute 
for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). In this role, Heisel is responsible for IHME’s media relations, digital outreach, events and marketing, publications, scientific communications, and external relations, including government engagements and policy translation. He also is leading IHME’s internal community-building initiatives and manages the organization’s advancement efforts.
As Director of Global Engagement, Heisel oversees the publication of Population Health Metrics, the scientific journal administratively housed at IHME, and advises on the Institute’s publication strategy. He and IHME’s Chief Strategy and Operations Officer oversee communications and coordination with the growing Global Burden of Disease collaborative network, currently at more than 1,000 researchers in more than 100 countries.
In addition, his team administers the Roux Prize, one of global health’s highest honors. Heisel, who joined IHME in 2009, has a BA in Journalism and Spanish from the University of Montana. Prior to joining the Institute, he was a reporter at the Los Angeles Times.
IHME was established at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2007. Its mission is to improve health through better health evidence.
Juan Eugenio Hernández Ávila
Juan Eugenio Hernández Ávila is the Director of the Information 
Center for Decisions in Public Health, a research center dedicated to the advancement of knowledge in the area of health information systems and decision making. Dr. Hernández received a Sc. D in epidemiology from the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico and a M.Sc. in biostatistics from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, of the Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on the use of routine information systems in the decision making processes at all levels of the health system hierarchy in Mexico and other countries in the Latin American Region. He has led the development of several research projects with the aim to strengthen the public health surveillance system, promoting the integrated production and use of information among different programs such as dengue epidemiological surveillance, water quality, vector control and health education and promotion of healthy environments. One of the main projects he is leading is the development of an integral health information system to support the development and strengthening of maternal health services in Mexico. The use of this planning tool has helped the local maternal health programs in the States of Mexico to identify unmet needs and low coverage areas. He has also collaborated in the performance assessment of the health system in Costa Rica and the development of health information system´s strengthening plans in the Meso American region. Dr. Hernández was one of the founding members of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Health Information System Strengthening (RELACSIS for its Spanish acronym). He now acts as its special collaborator. He has led the development of several research projects in Mexico with the aim to demonstrate the feasibility of the use, geo-referencing and linking data produced by the routine health information system with census population and socio-demographic characteristics, as well as with vital statistics data, with the aim to produce knowledge and relevant information, at a micro-regional, for the strategic planning of the health services in the country
Theo Lippeveld
Dr. Lippeveld is the Director of the Gates funded Data Use Partnership
(DUP) in Ethiopia. He is a public health physician with more than 25 years of experience in the development of health services systems in developing countries, having spent more than 10 years as a long-term advisor in Africa and Asia. He has extensive experience in general project management and in Health Information System (HIS) development and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in particular.
Dr. Lippeveld has more than twenty years of experience in the design and implementation of national routine health information systems (e.g. Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Niger, Pakistan, Uganda, etc.). He is a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the Health Metrics Network, of the M&E Working Group of WHO/Geneva’s Department on “Making Pregnancy Safer,” and of the M&E Working Group of the Partnership for Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health. Together with his colleagues and with the Unit of Country Information Systems of WHO/Geneva, he wrote and edited a book on lessons learned and best practices in routine HIS, based on various country experiences.
He is the incorporator and former president and Chairman of the Board of the Routine Health Information Network (RHINO). Dr. Lippeveld has a Medical Degree from the University of Louvain (Belgium), a Master Degree in public health from Harvard University (USA), and a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the Tropical Institute of Antwerp (Belgium). Between 1989 and 1997, he was visiting lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health (USA).
Alvin B. Marcelo
Dr. Alvin B. Marcelo is a general and trauma surgeon by training who is 
currently executive director of the Asia eHealth Information Network. Prior to this, he served as senior vice-president and chief information officer of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth). As the director of the University of the Philippines Manila National Telehealth Center and chief of the Medical Informatics Unit, Dr. Marcelo established the Master of Science in Health Informatics program and conducted local and international research in the field of eHealth and health information systems development. He took his postdoctoral fellowship in medical informatics at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland with research interests in telepathology, mobile computing, and bibliometric analysis of MEDLINE content. Dr. Marcelo also manages the International Open Source Network for ASEAN+3, a centre of excellence in free and/or open source software established by UNDP, and advises the Community Health Information Tracking System (or CHITS), a Stockholm Challenge finalist in the health category in 2006. He is the Philippine representative to the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI) and the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Dr. Marcelo is certified in the governance of enterprise IT (CGEIT), The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), Archimate, and COBIT5 Implementation.
Vincent Shaw
Dr. Shaw is a family health physician who has been working 
for the last three years with the Health Information Systems Programme South Africa (HISP-SA) as manager and team member. HISP-SA is a not-for-profit organization which specializes in strengthening Routine Health Information Systems. After graduating from medical school, Dr. Shaw spent a number of years in Namibia in both the public and private sectors. It was here that his interest in PHC developed, and in particular in the role that the doctor plays as a member of the PHC team. In 1988 he and his family moved to Queenstown, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, to take up a position in a private practice. After two years, he decided to return to the public sector where he worked at Hewu Hospital in the then Ciskei Homeland initially and later in clinics in and around Queenstown, in the Eastern Cape.
From 1992 onward, during the restructuring of the health services in South Africa, he worked in numerous positions in the regional, and district offices, before taking up a position as Acting Director for District Hospitals in the provincial office of the Eastern Cape Department of Health. He occupied this position for 5 years during which he became involved in the development of an information system for the district hospitals in the Eastern Cape Province. Dr. Shaw is currently completing his PhD programme in Information Systems through the University of Oslo, Norway. His area of interest is in hospital information systems in developing countries, and besides extensive experience in South Africa, he has also worked in Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania.
Jason Smith
Dr. Jason B. Smith holds as academic appointment as Clinical Associate Professor of Health Behavior in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Dr. Smith also serves as Director of Health Systems Strengthening for the USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation project, overseeing the areas of Health Information Systems, Data Use and Communications, Organizational Development, and Capacity Building. Before joining UNC, Dr. Smith spent over 20 years working at Family Health International (now FHI-360) in various scientific and managerial capacities, most recently as FHI’s Director of Research Utilization. In this capacity, he was responsible for leading FHI’s efforts to translate research into practice and apply evidence-based approaches to improve health policy and programs world-wide.
In addition to being a skilled research scientist, Dr. Smith has served on the management teams of several large-scale international health projects, with direct responsibility for strategy, implementation, reporting and inter-agency relations. He is an author of over 25 peer-reviewed publications and frequently presents his work in various professional fora. Dr. Smith has served as an advisor to a variety of public health agencies including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the World Health Organization. In a career that spans three decades, Dr. Smith has accumulated site experience in many developing countries including Bangladesh, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, Nigeria, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Vietnam.
Sally Stansfield
Dr. Stansfield works as a Director in the Social Impact 
Consulting Practice, a newly launched commerical consulting business within Deloitte Consulting. Previously, she was the Health Systems Technology Advisor for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva and the Executive Secretary of the Health Metrics Network (HMN), an innovative global partnership that is hosted by WHO. In both roles, and as the founding director of the HMN initiative, Dr. Stansfield has worked to improve health and save lives by strengthening and aligning health information systems around the world. With her leadership, the HMN Secretariat coordinates the efforts of member countries, technical agencies, donors, and civil society groups that are committed to improving the availability and use of information for decision making. Dr. Stansfield, an expert in public health and the development of health information systems, has worked extensively in the field in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East.
For seven years prior to assuming the leadership of the HMN, she worked in the Global Health Program for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. There, she was instrumental in creating and managing several landmark alliances including the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Global Fund to fight Tuberculosis, AIDS and Malaria (GFATM), and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). She has worked in senior positions for Management Sciences for Health in Cambodia, the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, the US Agency for International Development, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Stansfield has also served in research and teaching roles on the faculties of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia; McGill University in Montreal; Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; the University of Washington in Seattle; and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.
Sanjay Zodpey
Prof. Sanjay Zodpey presently works as Vice President (North) and Director, 
Public Health Education, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), New Delhi and also holds a leadership position as Director at Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi. He is appointed as Adjunct Faculty at Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University, Georgia, Adjunct Professor in Public Health Leadership, Gillings School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and Honorary Professor, Sydney Medical School, The University of Sydney, Australia. He also served as Director of Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar and Bhubaneswar. Earlier he worked as Professor at Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Faculty in Clinical Epidemiology Unit and Vice Dean at Government Medical College, Nagpur, India. He also worked as Professor and Chair at the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Shri VN Government Medical College, Yavatmal, India.
By training he is a physician, public health specialist, and epidemiologist. Prof. Zodpey completed all his medical education – MBBS, MD and PhD from Government Medical College, Nagpur, India. He has also acquired post-graduate qualifications in Sociology, Public Administration and Economics from Nagpur University. He is the Member of Executive Committee and Vice-Chair-Elect of Global Evaluation and Monitoring Network for Health (GEMNet-Health). He is the recipient of numerous honors and research awards. Prof. Zodpey has authored more than 260 scientific publications in international and Indian peer reviewed-journals. He is the Editor of Indian Journal of Public Health and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Public Health Education and Promotion. He serves as a Member of Editorial Board for 18 peer-reviewed journals.
