CPRC

James F. Phillips joined the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health in 2007.  Prior to joining the Mailman faculty he had resident assignments in the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Thailand with the Population Council.  In the 1980s, he directed the Matlab Experiment in Bangladesh and led research activities for supporting national programs for scaling up Matlab service models. In 1988, he joined the Council’s Center for Policy Research Division in New York.    He holds a sociology-demography PhD degree from the University of Michigan and an MS in Population Studies from the University of Hawaii.   

For the past 15 years, Dr. Phillips’ research has focused on health policy and population topics in Africa.  Since 1993, he has collaborated with the Ghana Ministry of Health Navrongo Health Research Centre on a community-based health services experiment.  The Navrongo Experiment, provided conclusive evidence that  maternal and childhood Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are achievable in rural Africa.  The Navrongo Experiment has also become a model for translating evidence into large scale action.  Beginning with replication research in seven rural districts of Ghana, Dr. Phillips has designed and implemented procedures for accelerating and monitoring health sector reform.  Known as the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) Initiative, the program evaluates the impact of tested interventions on large scale health reform.   

Professor Phillips is a founding member of four international networks formed to promote demographic, health, and social research in developing countries: the INDEPTH-Network of longitudinal health research field stations, the World Health Organization network “ExpandNet” for fostering the scaling up of reproductive health research, the INTACT-Network for promoting social research on preventing female genital mutilation, and Exchange-Africa for creating regional partnerships for evidence-based health systems development.    

Dr. Phillips current research builds on his link with African health policy community and role as a science advisor to several institutions that are managing longitudinal demographic surveillance systems in Asia and Africa.  Demographic surveillance sites that have been developed for epidemiological and vaccine research, manage databases that register detailed information on longitudinal demographic dynamics in large populations. In collaboration with computer scientists, Dr. Phillips has developed models for the low cost and rapid replication of these complex database systems, leading to the proliferation of INDEPTH demographic surveillance in Africa.   

Future work aims to expand links between Columbia faculty and African scientific teams, providing field practicum opportunities involving longitudinal data analysis, epidemiological research, health systems research, and health policy problem solving.  A new Columbia university collaboration is being developed with Ahmadu Bello University and health authorities in three northern Nigerian States.  In Ghana and Tanzania, Dr. Phillips work will support health systems research collaboration between the Mailman School, the University of Ghana School of Public Health, the Swiss Tropical Institute, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the Ghana Health Service, the Ifakara Health Research Institute and the Tanzania Ministry of Health. 

Professor Phillips is a member of several science advisory boards and has published books on evaluation methods, South Asian demography, and population policy and has journal publications on the demographic methods, reproductive health, research utilization, health systems and policy, and other topics. 

James F. Phillips' Departmental Biography Page