Gbadegesin Alawode is a Public Health practitioner, Innovator and Universal Health Coverage Advocate working at the intersection of Policy, Technology and Health Financing to promote awareness and expand health insurance coverage among the low income, informal sector and vulnerable populations. Growing up, Gbadegesin experienced the wide inequity in healthcare and what it means to suffer, delay care or die as a result of poverty or inability to pay healthcare bills. During his MPH Health Economics and Health financing class, he was introduced to the staggering and heartbreaking statistics of people without access to healthcare and those pushed into extreme poverty because of health expenses. In 2016, his MPH dissertation qualitatively explored the design and reasons for the abysmal coverage of National Health Insurance Schemes in Nigeria. Findings from the thesis led to the founding of BrelaHealth, a social enterprise and digital health financing platform that allows the low income, informal sector populace, vulnerable groups, SMEs to find, save and signup for affordable health insurance premiums and access quality healthcare as at when needed through technology.
In 2021, he was granted a waiver for the Article Processing Charges to publish his thesis in a high-impact journal – BMC Public Health (https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-020-10133-5) which has been accessed globally over 20,000 times. Gbadegesin life mission is to ensure people live healthy, wealthy and productive lives regardless of their background and socioeconomic status.
Gbadegesin is a recipient of the 2014 State National Youth Service Corps Award in Katsina State; Women Deliver 2016 Youth Scholarship Copenhagen, Denmark; fellow of the 2017 Dutch-Nigerian Student Business Challenge, Netherlands; 2018 Future Leaders Connect Nigeria finalist; 2021 Orange Corners Nigeria Incubatee and 2022 Alumni Ambassador of the Orange Corners Nigeria programme. Gbadegesin holds a Master’s degree in Public Health majoring in Health Policy and Management and a bachelor’s degree in Human Anatomy from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso. Other certificates include WHO Health Financing for Universal Health Coverage, USAID Fundamentals of Monitoring and Evaluation, British Council Ideas for a better world: Leading change through policymaking, Entrepreneurship from Delft University of Technology and Orange Corners Nigeria Incubation Programme by Fate Foundation.