Dr. Stephen Birch is a Professor in The Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis at McMaster University in Canada and visiting Chair in Health Economics at the University of Manchester.  He also holds visiting appointments at the University of Technology Sydney,  Australia and the University of Cape Town, South Africa.  He is senior scientist at the WHO Collaborating Centre on Health Workforce Planning at Dalhousie University, Canada and a former member of the UK Department of Health’s Centre for Workforce Intelligence.  He has served as a consultant with WHO and the World Bank as well as many national and provincial health departments on health workforce planning.  He was a consultant to the Barer-Stoddart report on physician planning in Canada, The Kilshaw report on Physician payment reform in Canada and the George Committee on the future of the physican workforce in Ontario. He led research in Canada on the development and application of needs-based models of health care funding and has further developed these models for application to health workforce planning. His main research interests are in the economics of health care systems with particular emphasis on equity, resource allocation and alternative delivery models.  He has over 200 publications in peer reviewed journals and was ranked equal first in Canada and equal 35th in the world in the 2012 World Bank publication on the quantity and impact of health economics research.  He was Senior Editor for Social Science and Medicine from 1997-2012 and has served on various public boards including the Local Health Integration Network and the District Health Council in Hamilton, Ontario, the Health Professions Regulatory Council of Ontario and the Community Health Council for York District Health Authority.