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Mensah, Julia

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Last updated: June 11, 2025
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Julia Mensah is a senior health specialist with the World Bank. During her career at the World Bank, she has worked in a variety of domains in public health, encompassing reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health; outbreak preparedness and response; noncommunicable disease (NCD) control; and a broader policy dialogue on health systems strengthening. She has authored or coauthored reports assessing the effectiveness of the World Bank’s operations in the health sector, as well as technical papers on NCDs. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University.

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    Combating Noncommunicable Diseases in Kenya: An Investment Case
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-03-24) Korir, Julius; Nugent, Rachel; Hutchinson, Brian; Mensah, Julia
    Noncommunicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, chronic lung diseases, and heart diseases are the leading cause of death and disability. In Kenya, the growing prevalence of these diseases is a major public health concern and a hindrance to long-term economic growth. This is because these conditions reduce human capital and divert societal resources. The high cost of managing the growing caseload of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) also afflicts Kenyan families, businesses, and the government, and increasingly leads to impoverishment. Developing an appropriate policy response to the threat of NCDs requires a clear understanding of the economic impacts as well as the benefits of potential interventions, both from a health and an economic perspective. Such information allows policy makers to evaluate the trade-offs between different investment decisions, with the goal of ensuring that any interventions maximize the rewards to individuals and to society at large. Combating Noncommunicable Diseases in Kenya is one of a few published studies on the economic burden of NCDs in Kenya. It focuses on a limited set of conditions, aligned with the burden of NCDs in Kenya, and demonstrates both the long-term costs of these diseases and the strong health and economic benefits of scaling up interventions. It contributes to a growing body of analysis on NCDs in Kenya—and in Africa—and provides muchneeded evidence to facilitate advocacy and foster dialogue to confront this serious challenge.
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    Accelerating Health Reforms through Collective Action : Experiences from East Africa
    (2014-10-08) Nkrumah, Yvonne; Mensah, Julia; Nkrumah, Yvonne; Mensah, Julia; Idusso, Jacqueline; Mhando, Joseph; Ombaka, Eva; Gichio, Debra; Omondi, Teresa; Nyakiongora, Abel; Higenyi, Emannuel; Kaitiritimba, Robinah
    The roots signify the origins and initial steps taken to build a coalition and the associated teething problems; the trunk represents efforts toward sustaining the organization s existence and growth; and the branches highlight the collective actions undertaken by the coalition in fulfillment of its aims and objectives. In preparing this book, and based on their unique experiences, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda respectively focus their chapters on the roots, trunk, and branches. To further the tree analogy, each country s chapter draws parallels or makes comparisons with what pertains in the other two countries, to show how they benefit from each other in an ongoing knowledge exchange. Chapter two (Putting Down Roots, Tanzania) has three main sections: an overview of the country context and health reform agenda; a discussion of the experiences of MSG-Pharma, Tanzania s multi-stakeholder body, in setting up a coalition, and lessons learned. These outline the reasons leading to the establishment of the multi-stakeholder group and describe how challenges met during its formation stages were overcome. Chapter three (growing a strong trunk, Kenya) provides insights into the approaches employed by Kenya s multi-stakeholder coalition, the Forum for Transparency and Accountability in Pharmaceutical Procurement (FoTAPP), in order to sustain the interest and commitment of key stakeholders. It presents a brief description of the Kenyan context in relation to the pharmaceutical sector, highlighting challenges in the sector, and the importance of a multi-stakeholder coalition amid other reform platforms. Chapter four (branching out and bearing fruits, Uganda) describes the opportunities, challenges, and rewards associated with designing and implementing a joint intervention in furtherance of the goals of the Medicines Transparency Alliance (MeTA), the coalition in Uganda. It also illustrates how the coalition has been Able to inform policy dialogue and reform efforts in the health sector.