Matthew Jowett is a Senior Health Financing Specialist with the World Health Organization. He recently moved from the Barcelona Office of WHO Europe, where he was closely involved in the development of the Barcelona Course on Health Financing. During his six years there, he worked closely with the Governments of Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia to develop health financing strategies to move towards universal coverage, and was involved in advising Ministries of Health on responses to the recent financial crisis experienced largely in western Europe. Prior to joining WHO, Matthew spent seven years in Asia working as a health financing policy specialist, and prior to that worked in Africa before working as a researcher at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK. His PhD thesis analysed early attempts in Vietnam to the Vietnamese National Health Insurance programme to workers not in salaried employment.