Dr. Kateryna Ostrovska
Kateryna Ostrovska, M.D. is a Ukrainian Health Policy and Systems Strategist, Fulbright Scholar, and Member of the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) with over 13 years of experience spanning clinical medicine, health governance, workforce optimization, and strategic foresight.
She is a Member of the European Health Futures Forum (EHFF), a Member of the Foresight Europe Network, and is currently pursuing an Executive Master in EU Studies at the Centre international de formation européenne (CIFE).
Kateryna’s work focuses on strategic healthcare management, health systems strengthening, evidence-informed policymaking, and the use of foresight and anticipatory governance to navigate uncertainty in complex health environments. She applies systems thinking, human-centered design, and futures methodologies to build resilient and sustainable health systems, particularly in conflict-affected and transitioning contexts.
Between October 2024 and July 2025, Kateryna served as a Fulbright Research and Development Scholar at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Healthforce Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). During her fellowship, she analyzed California’s nurse staffing ratio policy to generate evidence-based insights for health workforce reforms in Ukraine.
While at UCSF, she also audited courses in Comparative Health Systems and Financing at the University of California, Berkeley and Health Care Finance and Economics at UCSF, deepening her expertise in health system design and financing models. Listen to Kateryna Ostrovska ‘Ukraine, strategic healthcare management, and anticipatory governance’.
From 2021 to 2024, Kateryna served as the Health Workforce Optimization and Policy Workstream Lead within the USAID Health Reform Support Project, implemented by Deloitte Consulting. In this role, she collaborated with national and regional Ukrainian health authorities to modernize continuing professional development, workforce planning, and facility-based optimization. A key achievement of this period was overseeing the launch of Ukraine’s first nationwide electronic Continuing Professional Development (eCPD) platform, a transformative digital infrastructure for the country’s health workforce.
In 2020, Kateryna transitioned from clinical practice to systems-level transformation, joining the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a Health Governance Specialist. In this position, she supported the continuity of healthcare delivery in conflict-affected regions of Ukraine during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading telemedicine adoption and interoperability efforts within the regional health system. Her work at UNDP also involved supporting healthcare access for internally displaced populations.
In 2025, Kateryna presented a research seminar on nurse staffing mandates in wartime Ukraine at the Transforming Care Network. She also contributed as a health policy and foresight expert at the international forum Recovery of Ukraine: New Opportunities and Development Scenarios, where she addressed topics including EU accession, institutional readiness, and the role of strategic foresight in Ukraine’s integration process.
To deepen her expertise in policy analysis and strategic leadership, Kateryna has pursued advanced executive education at leading global institutions. In 2025, she completed the Strategic Healthcare Leadership Program at the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School.
Between November 2024 and February 2025, she completed an executive course in Public Policy Analysis at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She also participated in the Jean Monnet Winter School on EU Policy Making at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2025, and completed an executive education program on Democracy and Autocracy in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood at the University of Tartu between 2024 and 2025.
Her foresight credentials include training in Foresight Essentials from the Institute for the Future (IFTF), Foresight Approaches in Global Public Health from the World Health Organization (WHO), Foundations in Natural Foresight from TFSX, and Design for Social Impact from the Stanford d.school.
She also holds certifications in Implementation Science in Public Health from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Early Health Technology Assessment from EIT Health, and the Hospital Flow Professional Development Program from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). She is a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt from Lean Institute Ukraine.
Kateryna began her medical career in 2012 as a General Practitioner and Family Doctor at Dnipropetrovsk Primary Medical Care Center №9, where she practiced for over four years. Between December 2016 and January 2020, she worked at Zdorovoe Pokolenie, a private clinic in Dnipro, first as a General Practitioner and then as Head Physician from September 2017, leading both clinical and administrative operations, including quality management and patient safety initiatives.
In February 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kateryna volunteered as a General Practitioner with the International Charitable Organization KUST, organizing and delivering medical care for internally displaced persons who had arrived in Dnipro.
Kateryna earned her M.D. in General Medicine from Dnipropetrovsk State Medical Academy in 2010. She received her initial board certification in General Practice and Family Medicine in 2012, with subsequent recertifications in 2016 and 2020.
She also completed the Salzburg Family Medicine Seminar at Duke University in 2019 and the SSPH+ Lugano Summer School in Public Health Policy, Economics, and Management at USI Università della Svizzera italiana in 2022. She attended the Observatory Venice Summer School on Navigating the Health Workforce Crisis at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies in 2024.
In 2019, Kateryna was recognized by the Bohdan Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation with the Young Generation Will Change Ukraine award, a distinction celebrating young Ukrainian professionals driving positive transformation in the country.
Visit her LinkedIn profile and her Healthforce Center at UCSF profile.