Dr Olena Nizalova is Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in Health Economics at the University of Kent and Director of the GLO Virtual Young Scholars Program (GLO VirtYS). She received her doctoral degree at Michigan State University (USA) in 2006, and prior to joining the University of Kent worked at the Kyiv School of Economics. Olena’s research interests are in the fields of labour and health economics, economics of aging, and policy evaluation. Her research focuses on the interplay between labour market, health and family obligations, be it the provision of informal care to elderly parents in the USA and Europe or the wage penalty for motherhood (Ukraine), or the impact of labour market outcomes on health and wellbeing. Her research has been supported by the Global Challenge Research Fund, European Commission, Wellcome Trust, MRC, UKAid, ESRC, World Bank, European Commission Horizon 2020 programme, Global Development Network, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, ERSTE Foundation (Austria), and Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies (University of Michigan). Currently, Dr Nizalova’s studies the population health crisis in the countries of the former Soviet Union, with special emphasis on tuberculosis (impact of TB epidemic on individual and firms’ productivity), maternal and infant health (evaluation of the maternal and infant health interventions), and cardio-vascular diseases.