As Head of the OECD Health Division, Francesca Colombo is responsible for OECD work on health, which aims at providing internationally comparable data on health systems and applying economic analysis to health policies, advising policy makers, stakeholders and citizens on how to respond to demands for more and better health care. She works with the Director and Deputy Director of the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs to support the strategic orientations of the Secretary-General and their implementation in the area of health.

Mrs. Colombo was a Senior Health Policy Analyst in the Health Division and since November 2013 has been acting Head of the Health Division. She has led projects on the performance of health systems in OECD countries, covering a wide range of topics, including quality of health care policies, health financing and the impact of private health insurance on health systems, health workforce and the international migration of doctors and nurses. She has been responsible for OECD Asian Social and Health activities with non-member countries, working with the OECD/Korea Policy Centre. More recently, she was responsible for a major review of health care quality policies across over a dozen OECD countries. She is a leading international expert on health and care issues for elderly populations and also held responsibilities for co-ordinating OECD involvement at high-level meetings such as on diabetes and dementia.

Mrs Colombo joined the OECD in 1999. Prior to that, she was seconded to the Ministry of Health and Labour of Guyana as Acting Head of the Planning Unit, where she was instrumental to the implementation of financing and governance reforms of the health system, and also worked at UNCTAD. Over her career, she has travelled extensively in Europe, South America and Asia, advising governments on health system policies and reforms. Mrs Colombo holds a MSc Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom) and BSc in Economics and Management from Bocconi School of Economics (Italy).