Thanasak Thumbuntu is a health policy leader advancing urban health equity through Thailand’s universal health coverage system. As Director of the Bangkok Regional Office of the National Health Security Office (NHSO), he oversees the financing and commissioning of health services for more than 3.5 million residents. He works at the intersection of health financing, governance, and service delivery by implementing provider payment mechanisms, managing contracts with public and private providers, and coordinating with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and partners to ensure services reach underserved communities in a complex urban environment.

Thanasak is driven by a commitment to social medicine and the belief that health systems are not neutral: they can reproduce injustice or actively repair it. Raised in a rural area and beginning his career as a dentist in underserved settings, he saw how deprivation and unequal opportunity shaped people’s life chances long before illness occurred. This experience became a turning point, leading him to focus on structural reforms that address the social determinants of health.

A flagship initiative he is proud of is the Clean Air Room program, which reframes hazardous air pollution as a health system responsibility. Thanasak coordinated across the NHSO, local government, academia, and civil society to allocate resources for clean air shelters. The program also addressed a policy gap that had excluded non-government child development centers from local funding, enabling more equitable protection across communities. During the COVID 19 crisis, Thanasak co initiated a national task shifting and telemedicine effort that mobilized more than 800 dentists to support home isolated patients through triage, monitoring, and coordination with public health centers, reaching over 2,500 patients.

At the core of his future direction is strengthening equity-oriented purchasing and innovative care models, including telemedicine, AI assisted diagnostics, and value-based approaches for chronic respiratory diseases, while expanding community led responses to environmental health risks.