Elaine Kelly, PhD

Elaine Kelly joined the Health Foundation in October 2018 as Head of Economics Research, becoming Assistant Director of the REAL Centre in 2022.

Elaine worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) for seven years, after completing her PhD. She worked on a range of academic and policy-focused projects across health and health care, including Securing the Future, co-authored with the Health Foundation while at IFS, and more recently the REAL Centre’s 2021 Insight Report Our Ageing Population.

Elaine retains a part-time role at the IFS as Senior Research Economist and Deputy Director of the NIHR Social Care Workforce Policy Research Unit.

She has a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford, and an MSc and PhD in Economics from University College London. She was also a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University.