Fanor Balderrama Santander

Dr. Fanor Balderrama is a former post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation under the supervision of Dr. Geoff Anderson at University of Toronto. His research focused on modelling the impact of COVID and COVID containment strategies on health outcomes across socioeconomic strata using econometric models. He also worked on mapping the risk of contracting COVID and COVID-related employment risks in the city of Toronto and in Ontario, and the elaboration of risk indexes for these measures. During his tenure at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Fanor also collaborated with The World Bank Group on the assessment of the disruption of health care services in Latin American and Caribbean countries due to COVID.

Originally from Bolivia, he obtained his BSc in biomedical engineering form Yale University. He then went on to complete a Masters in bioengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). After returning to Bolivia to obtain an MBA from Universidad Privada Boliviana, he worked as a management consultant, worked in the medical device industry, and in public health care management. He then moved to Canada and completed a PhD in health economics from McMaster University, where his doctoral research was focused on the price-accessibility of pharmaceuticals in Ontario.

Currently, Fanor is a senior economist at the Ontario Medical Association, where he continues to do research analyzing clinical and administrative health care databases. His current projects focus on gender-related pay gaps and surgical outcomes among physicians in Ontario. His methodological expertise includes econometrics, quantitative health policy analysis, and he has a passion for programming in Python, R, SAS, and Unix.