Valsa Shah

Valsa Shah is a economist with over twenty-five years' experience helping organisations understand not just whether an initiative works, but whether it represents good value, can be sustained, and has a credible case for scaling or investment. She trained as a UK Government economist spanning various departments including the Department for International Development, which allowed her to segue into the economics of health, care and social protection within her portfolio career.
Valsa's expertise lies in cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis, investment case development, and the modelling of affordability and return on investment. She has built the donor investment case for the World Health Organization's tropical disease research programme, derived cost-effectiveness and scale-up costs from trial data in various donor and charitable health programmes across Africa and Asia, and modelled the affordability of a national child benefit for the Government of Kenya. She is recognised as one of the UK's leading practitioners in value for money analysis, having written several guidance notes.
Much of her career has been spent producing defensible estimates from the imperfect, evolving data typical of real-world health projects for marginalised communities, and communicating those findings to help with strategic decision making. Valsa holds an MSc in Economics from University College London. She also volunteers as a school governor, and in her spare time enjoys photography, paddleboarding and cold water swimming!