The exceptional calibre of this year鈥檚 nominations highlights the extraordinary work being done worldwide to advance health equity. Alongside honouring the 2025 award winners, the 51吃瓜网School of Population and Global Health (SPGH) is also pleased to profile the top-ranked finalists, celebrating their inspiring efforts and the compassion, humility, and social justice values this award seeks to honour.
Please check out the remarkable profiles below.
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Waleska L贸pez Can煤
In Guatemala鈥檚 central highlands, where Indigenous communities have long faced exclusion from health systems, Dr. Waleska L贸pez Can煤 has built a career rooted in justice, language, and dignity. A proud Kaqchikel Maya physician from Patz煤n, Chimaltenango, she now serves as Chief Medical Officer of Wuqu鈥� Kawoq | Maya Health Alliance, leading one of the country鈥檚 most respected Indigenous health teams.
Her path to medicine was marked by resilience. As a child, L贸pez Can煤 and her family were displaced to Mexico during Guatemala鈥檚 armed conflict and genocide of Maya people. Returning years later, she pursued medical training at the Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of San Carlos in Guatemala鈥攚here she faced open racism and systemic barriers. She persevered, becoming not only a physician but one of the most influential Indigenous leaders in Guatemalan healthcare today.
At Wuqu鈥� Kawoq, L贸pez Can煤 has overseen programs that prove what culturally grounded care can achieve. Her teams deliver services in Mayan languages, address child malnutrition, maternal health, and chronic disease, and pioneer patient navigation models that have reduced maternal mortality and obstetrical violence. She insists that Indigenous people not only receive care, but help design it鈥攕haping clinical protocols, staffing models, and community priorities.
Her leadership has also opened doors for Indigenous women. Through mentorship and training, she has supported dozens of Maya nurses, health workers, and midwives to step into leadership roles, challenging systemic barriers in both health and education. Her efforts show that advancing equity in health requires advancing gender justice as well.
Beyond the clinic, L贸pez Can煤 is a scholar and advocate. Her publications call out structural violence in Guatemalan health policy, urging global health to centre Indigenous knowledge and experience. She speaks regularly at international forums, offering both critique and solutions.
Like Paul Farmer, she has shown that health must confront structural violence and centre dignity rather than exclusion. Her vision is simple but radical: that Maya people deserve not just access to care, but the same quality of care anyone else would expect. In pursuing that vision, Dr. L贸pez Can煤 is helping to redefine what health equity means in Guatemala 鈥� and reminding the world that justice, not charity, must be the standard for care.
Saibal Kumar Jana
For over four decades, Dr Saibal Kumar Jana has practised medicine as public ethics alongside Adivasi and mine-worker communities in central India. As Chief Physician and Director of Shaheed Hospital in Dalli Rajhara, he helped shape a rare institution: a community-owned, worker-governed hospital born from the organised strength of labour. What began as a modest unit matured into a full-service facility that treats all who arrive鈥攄emonstrating that collective ownership can power clinical excellence, frugal innovation, and deep accountability to the people served.
Dr Jana鈥檚 leadership welds a broad clinical range to movement ethics. Under his watch, Shaheed Hospital embedded rational protocols, nurse-led maternity and newborn care, and safe, low-cost surgical programs鈥攁n intentional counterpoint to over-medicalised, fee-for-service models. He has trained cadres of nurses, midwives, medical officers, and community health workers, treating pedagogy as a force multiplier for frontline capability. Outreach extends care to people who cannot easily reach the hospital鈥攔ehabilitation, DOTS, palliative care, and alcohol de-addiction鈥攕o the system moves toward the patient, not the other way around.
In moments of crisis, he has been unwavering鈥攆rom early service during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy to later humanitarian emergencies鈥攂ringing disciplined triage, respectful communication, and evidence-grounded public-health practice to those most exposed to harm. His rights-based leadership also includes long engagement with peer-led HIV prevention among sex workers in Kolkata鈥檚 Sonagachi community, reframing programs around agency and safety rather than stigma.
Beyond Dalli Rajhara, his influence runs through India鈥檚 key health equity platforms鈥擩an Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), Medico Friends Circle (MFC), and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA)鈥攃onnecting frontline realities to policy, training, and operational research. He has contributed to state and national systems through the State Health Resource Centre (Chhattisgarh), and collaborations with NACO and CARE India on capacity building. Early community-training work helped seed the Mitanin initiative that later informed India鈥檚 ASHA cadre鈥攑lacing equity and agency in the hands of local women health activists across tens of thousands of villages. A clinician-scholar grounded in practice, he has partnered on operational research and clinical studies in malaria, TB care-coordination, and maternal health鈥攗sing rigorous inquiry to strengthen low-cost, high-quality care.
A note on ideology and method
At the heart of Dr. Jana鈥檚 practice is a clear set of convictions:
- Health as justice, not charity. Care must confront structural disadvantage and expand what is possible for the poor鈥攏ot apologise for scarcity but reorganise systems to overcome it.
- Community ownership over commodification. Governance must be local; patients and workers are not consumers and labour but co-owners whose participation improves quality and accountability.
- Rational, appropriate, and transparent care. Protocols should be evidence-based, cost-conscious, and intelligible to the community; unnecessary interventions and profit-driven overtreatment are forms of harm.
- Dignity and agency as clinical necessities. Programs must be designed with people, not for them鈥攅specially women, informal workers, and stigmatised groups鈥攂ecause agency is a determinant of health.
- Training as emancipation. To change outcomes at scale, train local talent and mentor rural practitioners for the long haul, the curriculum is as important as the clinic.
These principles are not slogans but operating instructions: they explain the hospital鈥檚 frugal innovations, its nurse-led services, its insistence on transparent protocols, and its habit of taking care to the last mile. They also explain why Dr Jana has stayed close to the communities he serves鈥攂ecause proximity clarifies priorities and holds systems to account.
This long arc of work has been sustained by steadfast companionship. Alongside his partner, Alpana Jana, who stood by him through the most demanding phases of this journey鈥攁nd together with colleagues shaped by the same ethos鈥攈e has shown that when a hospital is rooted in the collective strength of labour, it naturally prioritises innovation through collective ownership: problems are solved locally, costs remain rational, and dignity is non-negotiable. In spirit and in practice, his career shows that health systems can be locally governed, clinically rigorous, intellectually serious, and socially just鈥攅xpanding what is possible for equity-centred care everywhere.
Najla Al-Sonboli and Nasher Al-Aghbari
鈥淚 had the chance to fly out of Yemen as many did, but I wanted to stay and help my people.鈥� With those words, Prof. Najla Al-Sonboli captures the commitment she and her husband, Dr. Nasher Al-Aghbari, have shown throughout more than a decade of conflict. As paediatricians, professors, and hospital leaders in Sana鈥檃, they have chosen to remain at their posts, often without pay, determined to ensure children continue to receive care.
In one of the world鈥檚 most challenging humanitarian crises, Najla and Nasher have become anchors for their patients and colleagues. They have led hospital teams through bombardments and epidemics, expanded paediatric services in under-resourced facilities, and inspired exhausted staff to keep showing up. Their example has sustained a generation of Yemeni health workers during years of hardship.
Both trained at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the couple returned to Yemen with advanced degrees in paediatrics and a shared conviction that health is a human right. That conviction has guided their leadership across multiple hospitals. Najla, Professor of Paediatrics at Sana鈥檃 University, previously led paediatrics at Al-Sabeen Hospital for Women and Children and was recently appointed Head of Paediatrics at Al-Kuwait University Hospital. In 2024鈥�25, she and her team established the hospital鈥檚 first Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, a therapeutic feeding centre for malnutrition, and expanded infectious disease and surgical services.
Nasher, Associate Professor at Sana鈥檃 University and longtime Head of the Paediatric Emergency Department at Al-Thawra General Modern Teaching Hospital, now also leads paediatrics at Al-Jomhori Teaching Hospital. A frontline clinician and researcher, he was among the earliest to respond to cholera cases in Sana鈥檃 and continues to study how health workers endure and adapt in conflict, while publishing widely on access to tuberculosis diagnosis and immunization.
Beyond the hospital walls, the couple has nurtured a global solidarity network - most notably through collaborators in Liverpool and the grassroots charity Habibti - mobilizing supplies, expertise, and moral support. Their commitment has earned international recognition: Najla was named a 鈥淗eroine for Health鈥� at the World Health Assembly in 2018, received an honorary degree from Liverpool in 2019, and delivered the school鈥檚 Leverhulme Lecture in 2024.
Embodying Paul Farmer鈥檚 鈥渁udacity of accompaniment,鈥� Najla and Nasher pair scientific rigor with everyday acts of care - securing food, clothing, and dignity for patients and staff alike. Their shared leadership continues to expand paediatric capacity, model gender-equitable staffing, and inspire Yemeni health workers to keep showing up, even in the hardest times.