OSA leads Gates Foundation-funded health study in Asia

Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee Dr. Vicente B. Jurlano (College of Agriculture ’79, magna cum laude) has been appointed Regional Lead Consultant for the Philippines and Asia by Itad, a United Kingdom-based multinational consulting firm, for a global research project spanning 13 countries, including the Philippines.

The project evaluates the impact of The Challenge Initiative (TCI), a global reproductive health program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University, USA. The two-year study (2024–2025) will share its initial findings at the 2025 International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in Bogotá, Colombia, in November.

Prior to this appointment, Jurlano served as Lead Researcher from 2022 to 2023 in a six-country study titled “The Deployment and Uptake of COVID-19 Vaccines for Refugees and Migrants in Regular and Irregular Situations.” Funded by the World Health Organization (WHO), the study was led by a global team from the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland. Jurlano co-authored the final report, which was published in BMJ Open (Volume 15, Issue 1, January 2025).

In 2024, Jurlano retired as professor of Population Studies at the University of the Philippines Population Institute (UPPI) in Diliman, Quezon City. He was later appointed as Professorial Lecturer by the same university. Earlier, he served as National Programme Officer for Population and Development at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) until his retirement in 2020, and as dean and associate professor of the College of Agriculture at Silliman University until 2000.

Jurlano holds a Ph.D. in Rural Development Communication from Macquarie University in Australia. In recognition of his contributions to the field, he received the Outstanding Sillimanian Award (OSA) for Applied Population Dynamics and Development in 2020.