Helena Legido-Quigley

Helena Legido-Quigley (born 1977) is a Spanish public health researcher who is an associate professor in Health Systems at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. She serves as an associate fellow of Chatham House and is a member of the Council of the World Economic Forum. She is editor-in-chief of BMJ Public Health and Elsevier's Journal of Migration and Health.

Early life and education Legido-Quigley is one of five daughters. She grew up in Barcelona. After graduating, Legido-Quigley started a master's course in social policy at the University of Edinburgh. In the early 2000s Legido-Quigley volunteered in South Africa, where she worked to support maternal health.

In addition to her academic work, Legido-Quigley is a member of the Council of the World Economic Forum and the Commission for Universal Health convened by Chatham House since 2022.

Legido-Quigley has argued that the barriers that migrants face to accessing healthcare are detrimental to their host countries, and called for governments to enhance their healthcare systems rather than turning people in need away.

In 2019 Legido-Quigley analysed the gender and ethnic diversity of public health universities. As part of her analysis, she found that whilst across all levels of academic positions the proportion of men and women were equal, men were overrepresented in senior positions and women overrepresented in junior positions. She found that ethnic minorities were considerably less likely to progress through an academic career than their white counterparts. Singapore's healthcare inequality was highlighted when a second wave of infections hit the island, spread by migrant workers. Writing in The Lancet, Legido-Quigley analysed the building blocks of effective healthcare systems; and said that they included governance, financing, delivery, health workers and information. She said that to contain outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2, governments would have to invest in testing, hospitals and their health workers. She called for more clear guidance from the European Union on how to count the number of people who die of coronavirus disease, as not all nations were using the same methodology, making comparisons of the public health response difficult. Legido-Quigley was also involved with analysis of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia and Europe.

Selected publications