Trudy Leong is a qualified clinical pharmacist and clinical epidemiologist. Her experience in the South African public healthcare system made her realise the relevance of a multidisciplinary team approach to healthcare, not only locally but also collaborating internationally (adapting global evidence for local context and implementation). She believes that social accountability requires public-health specialists to contribute to an equitable and universal healthcare system. Over the last decade, she has been involved in the National Department of Health Essential Drugs Programme of South Africa (based on the World Health Organization Essential Medicines List model concept), focusing on the selection of essential medicines. She has co-ordinated the Primary Healthcare Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List (2014, 2018 and 2020 editions), as well as the Adult Hospital Level STGs and EML (2015 and 2019 editions), co-ordinated and also contributed to over 100 evidence reviews and over 20 costing analyses. Trudy has also co-authored 12 articles related to medicine access, published in peer-review journals. She is currently working on the GELA Project.