Introducing Dr. Bawornsombat Leerapan, health administration team member and candidate for Minister of Public Health of the Prachachon Party, who embarked on a political path driven by the passion that "a good public health system means doctors and patients must survive together."
On 10 Jan 2026 GMT+7, the Prachachon Party officially unveiled The Professionals, the sixth team of the people's government management team. This is Associate Professor Dr. Bawornsombat Leerapan, Deputy Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, who became the technocrat specializing in public health administration for the people's government team.
Associate Professor Dr. Bawornsombat Leerapan, nicknamed “Doctor Ek,” is a renowned physician and health systems academic. He completed his medical degree with second-class honors from the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University; earned a master's degree in Health Policy and Management from Harvard University, USA; and obtained a doctorate in Health Services Research, Policy and Administration from the University of Minnesota, USA.
Dr. Bawornsombat has deep expertise in Health Systems Science and Systems Thinking, particularly in preventive medicine with specialization in epidemiology and community health management. He is also skilled in health policy research focused on designing sustainable and equitable public health systems. During the COVID-19 crisis, he played a key role in developing integrated mathematical models to assess situations and advise policy responses.
His professional experience includes chairing the doctoral program in Health Systems Science at Mahidol University, serving as an academic advisory board member for the Prince Mahidol Award Foundation under Royal Patronage, leading the strategic task force for strengthening health systems for the Office of the Higher Education Commission, acting as senior advisor for the Better Health Programme Thailand of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and advising on Thailand’s public health expenditure review project with the World Bank group.
Additionally, Dr. Bawornsombat served as director of Mae Tha Hospital in Lamphun Province, which was his starting point for witnessing disparities in health service access. He is also an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, and deputy director of the Health Policy and Management Center.
On 10 January 2026 GMT+7, the Prachachon Party introduced Associate Professor Dr. Bawornsombat as part of the management team under the campaign “The Professionals.” He was designated as the candidate for Minister of Public Health. Dr. Bawornsombat explained that he joined to apply systems management thinking to solve “public health suffering” and restore it to genuine "public health." His focus is on caring for healthcare workers—doctors and nurses—to prevent excessive burdens, alongside ensuring the public has equal, sustainable access to quality services. He briefly introduced himself to the Prachachon Party with the definition: “A good public health system means doctors and patients must survive together.” He pointed out that insufficient health resources cause the public to bear unfair burdens in exercising their basic rights, turning access to quality health services into a “burden” that citizens must pay. This leads to the saying, “The wealthy pay extra, the middle class use connections, the poor wait long to see a doctor when ill.” At the same time, “burdens” are heavily placed on doctors, nurses, and frontline personnel, especially in public health services. They often face risks, increased workloads without additional resources, and must solve urgent problems within a bureaucratic system that is difficult to manage, slow to adapt, and rarely reformed to address complex frontline health challenges.
“If we continue to measure the success of universal health coverage by the number of activities, projects, or reported outcomes—sometimes merely as added policies for election seasons rather than real change in people’s lives—the health system will keep ‘producing activities’ without necessarily producing ‘better health for the people.’ Good politics must dare to measure results by people’s lives, not by the flurry of policy writing on paper,” Associate Professor Dr. Bawornsombat stated.
