SPEAKERS 2022
Plenary speakers
Dr Josep Figueras
Dr Josep Figueras is the Director of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. In addition to WHO, he has served major multilateral organizations such as the European Commission and the World Bank. He has served as a policy advisor in more than 40 countries within Europe and beyond. He is a member of several governing, advisory and editorial boards, including the board of the European Health Forum Gastein.
His research focuses on the comparative health systems and policy analysis. He is an editor of the Observatory series published by Open University Press, and has published a wide range of volumes in this field, most recently: “Health systems governance” (2015); “Economic crisis: impact and implications for health systems policy in Europe” (2014); “Health systems, health and wealth: assessing the case for investing in health systems” (2012); “Health professional mobility and health systems. Evidence from 17 European countries” (2011); and “Cross-border health care in the European Union. Mapping and analysing practices and policies” (2011).
Ms Maya Matthews
Ms Maya Matthews has worked in public health for the past 20 years. She was appointed as Head of the Performance of Health Systems Unit, at the European Commission’s Health and Food Safety Directorate-General in October 2020. She was previously Deputy Head of Unit in the Strategy and Coordination unit. From 2013 to 2016, Maya was posted to the European Union’s Delegation to the United Nations in Geneva where she covered health issues and relations with the World Health Organisation. Before joining the European Commission in 2008, Maya worked in Brussels for the European Network of Health Promotion Agencies ( now Eurohealthnet) and consulted on reproductive health, HIV prevention and Tuberculosis. Maya holds a BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University and a Master in Health Promotion Sciences from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she also worked as a researcher from 1993 to 1995 on HIV knowledge, attitude and behaviour surveys in Europe.
Dr David Somekh
Dr David Somekh is a forensic psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and experienced clinician in management who retired from the UK NHS eighteen years ago to devote himself to a “portfolio” existence as a management consultant, expert witness and quality advisor. He has been involved in healthcare quality since 1988.
Dr Somekh served as an NGO representative on the Advisory Committee of ISQuA (International Society for Quality Assurance) from 1995-1997, and on the Advisory Committee of the UK NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) from 1999-2004. He was a member of the Executive of the European Society for Quality in Healthcare from 1998, was President 2005-7 and Vice-President 2007-9. He was a member of an EC working group on Patient Safety and Health Quality until it closed in 2016.
In 2009 he decided to start a new career as a futurist and has attended courses and meetings at Said School of Business in Oxford on scenario planning and now has links with a number of futures organisations. He has been an active member of the European Summercamp group since 2003. David is the EHFF Network Director, and setting up EHFF in 2013 together with Shawn Day, Sean Conlan, Agnieszka Daval and Marius Buiting.
Dr Elly Breedveld
Dr Elly Breedveld is Director at Perspekt (since September 2020), a quality institute in Dutch health care that focuses on stimulating and accounting for quality from a vision, in which values and results for the client are central. Perspekt supports providers of care and welfare in working on continuous quality improvement through the PREZO quality system and the narrative quality model PREZO Care based on dialogue.
Since 1991 Elly Breedveld worked in the health care sector as an educator, strategic advisor, coach and researcher in the field of health policy and management. She acquired, managed and conducted policy-oriented research and consultancy projects for various commissioning organizations.
Prior to joining Perspekt she worked as an independent entrepreneur at Elly Breedveld Consulting, was Programme Director of the Erasmus Executive Master of Health Business Administration (MBA-Health) at the Erasmus Centre for Health Care Management (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands), Strategic advisor of the Board of Directors of a large Dutch integrated long-term care and home care organization and Coordinator Academic Collaborative Centers at the Scientific Centre for Transformation in Healthcare and Welfare (Tranzo / Tilburg University) in cooperation with healthcare providers.
She was member and vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees of several healthcare organizations in the Netherlands (since 2001) and member of the Board of the European Health Management Association (since 2016).
Elly Breedveld studied Health Policy and Management at the Erasmus University Rotterdam from 1986 till 1991. In 2003 she defended her PhD thesis on the introduction of market incentives and the reform of the Dutch home care sector, at Tilburg University.
Prof Dr Dirk De Ridder
Prof Dr Dirk De Ridder is the Head of the research unit for Healthcare Policy at the Leuven Institute for Healthcare Policy, KU Leuven. He is also the Director of Quality at UZ Leuven university hospital.
Dr Axel Kaehne
Dr Axel Kaehne joined Edge Hill as a Senior Research Fellow in April 2013. He was appointed Reader in Health Service Research in 2016 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Integrated Care. He is currently President of EHMA, the European Health Management Association (Brussels).
Axel has designed and delivered evaluations of health improvement programmes in England and Wales and is also a member of the Children’s Nursing Research Unit at Alder Hey, the Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
He leads the Special Interest Group for Integrated Care of the European Health Management Association and works with colleagues across England to establish an Integrated Care Researcher Network. He is teaching Research Methodologies, Quantitative Approaches and Statistics/SPSS on the MCh and MRes course in the faculty and supervises currently three PhD students and several Master’s students. He is leading a module in Strategic Clinical Leadership and the dissertation module for the MCh (taught) degree.
Ms Elisabeth Kasilingam
Elisabeth Kasilingam is currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the European Multiple Sclerosis Platform (EMSP) and as a board member of the European Patients’ Forum. In these roles, she is highly committed to working towards better quality of life of patients with MS and other chronic conditions by the implementation of successful, results-oriented projects and policy campaigns and actions. Ms Kasilingam entered the European political arena more than 10 years ago, pursuing her interests in the field of human rights and specialising in the health and social sectors.
In her work with EMSP, Ms Kasilingam has been developing capacity-building programmes to support the further development of national MS patient organisations and health and social advocacy campaigns, as well as engagement activities to develop young patient advocates.
Prof Todorka Kostadinova
Prof Todorka Kostadinova was born on 20 October 1960 in Dobrich, where she graduated from ‘Geo Milev’ Language High School, German and English Language Teaching. She has two Master’s degrees from the University of Economics – Varna (Economics and Pedagogics) and a PhD from the University of National and World Economy, Sofia (2001). The title of her dissertation thesis is ‘Opportunities for Portfolio Management of Medical Institutions’.
Her academic career has been further developed by successive appointments as an Extraordinary Associate Professor at the Department of Economics and Health Care Management at MU-Varna (2002), Associate Professor of the same Department (2003) and Professor – in 2012 in the scientific speciality ‘Organisation and Management outside the Sphere of Material Production’. She has two specialities in the field of healthcare: ‘Health Economics’ (2005) and ‘Medical Informatics and Health Management’ (2006).
She delivered lectures as a guest lecturer in a Master’s Programme in Health Management at the University in Bern, Switzerland (2005 – 2006) and Medical University – Vienna (2009-2011). From 2008 to 2011 she was a member of an international research team at Berkeley University, after specialising in Leadership in healthcare at the same University (Global Health Leadership Forum at Berkeley, www.ghlf.org).
She has specialised in the following areas: Hospital Management at the University Hospitals in Zurich and Bern, Switzerland, Restructuring and Organisation of University Education in Health Management at the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands and the University of Manchester, the UK; Health Policy, Financing and Management in Healthcare at George Washington University and Georgetown University, the USA (2003-2004). After her specialisation, she was elected member of the academic staff of the Department of Global Health at the University of George Washington (2004-2009).
Within the period 2009 – 2013, Prof Kostadinova combines academic work with management positions at various levels as a parliamentary secretary at the Ministry of Health (2009), Deputy Minister of Health (2009 – 2010), a member of the Control Board (2009) and Supervisory Board (2010) of the National Health insurance Fund (NHIF), Sofia, a coordinator for Bulgaria of the International Network for Health in South-Eastern Europe (2009-2010), a member of the National Commissions and Committees on European Politics – at the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Bulgaria, on ethnic issues – at the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Chairman of the National Council on Food Safety at the Ministry of Health (2009-2010), Deputy Minister for International Cooperation, Public Health, including work with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, European programmes and projects, Electronic Healthcare.
In March 2011, she was elected Dean of the Faculty of Public Health at MU-Varna and remained in this position for a year, and since March 2012 she has been a Vice-Rector for International Cooperation, Accreditation and Quality.
Dr Eszter Kovacs
Dr Eszter Kovács first obtained an MSc degree in sociology at the University of Szeged in 2007. She started working as a lecturer in sociology of medicine at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences and as a statistician at the unit of Psychiatry of Children and Youth, Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged. She obtained her PhD degree in Health Sciences at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences, Semmelweis University in 2012. Eszter works as an assistant professor at the Health Services Management Training Centre, Faculty of Health and Public Services, Semmelweis University, in Budapest, Hungary. She has participated in several international projects: Health Prometheus, European Cross-border Care Collaborations and the Joint Action on European Health Workforce Planning and Forecasting. Her areas of expertise are human resources, HRH data and related health policy issues, health workforce planning, health professionals’ mobility, cross-border health care, patients’ rights and health/medical tourism.
Ms Laura Marchetti
DrPH Dimitra Panteli
DrPH Dimitra Panteli joined the Senior Management Team of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies on October 1, 2020. Prior to this she spent more than a decade at the Department of Health Care Management at Berlin University of Technology, where she was a senior research fellow, the Department`s research coordinator (2017-2020) and a frequent contributor of the Observatory’s research.
Dimitra’s work focuses on evidence- based decision-making in health care, primarily health technology assessment, and health systems research, for example on pharmaceutical regulation and quality assurance. She regularly collaborates with diverse stakeholders, including Ministries of Health, regulatory institutions, insurers, national institutes for public health and quality assurance, health technology assessment agencies, and professional associations.
She received her doctorate in public health from Berlin University of Technology, her MScPH. from the Charité Medical University in Berlin (as a scholar of the German Academic Exchange Service) and her Medical Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece).
Prof Dr Dirk Ramaekers
Prof Dr Dirk Ramaekers is the Head of the Health Crisis Management Team of the Belgian Ministry of Health and the Head of the Task Force on COVID-19 Vaccination in Belgium.
Mr Luca Rossi
Mr Luca Rossi is head of unit B3 (Germany, Austria, Portugal, Malta Social Affairs, Education, Health) at the European Commission’s Recovery and Resilience Task Force. He had previously been head of unit A6 (Security, External relations, Climate & Energy) in the UK Task Force.
Prof Walter Sermeus
Prof Walter Sermeus is a professor of healthcare management, Leuven Institute for Healthcare Policy, University of Leuven KU Leuven, Belgium. He is Programme Director of the Master in Health Care Policy & Management and the Frances Bloomberg International Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Toronto, Canada in 2015-16. He holds a PhD in Public Health, an MSc in Biostatistics, an MSc in Healthcare Management and Nursing Sciences and a BA in Nursing. He was the European coordinator of the EU-FP7 RN4CAST-project, Nurse Forecasting in Europe 2009-2011. He is a fellow of the European Academy of Nursing Science, American Academy of Nursing, and Royal Society of Medicine in Belgium and the UK.
Dr Miklós Szócska
Dr Miklós Szócska graduated at the Semmelweis University (SU) of Medicine in 1989. He holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1998), and a PhD from the SU in the field of change management (2003). After his graduation from the SU, he and his colleagues initiated the creation of the Health Services Management Training Centre (officially established in 1995). Between 1995 and 2000 he was serving as the deputy director and in 2000 he was appointed to be the director of the Centre. Between 2010-2014 Dr Szócska served as the Minister of State for Health of the Hungarian Government. Since 2014, he serves again as the Director of Health Services Management Training Centre and became responsible for the Institute of Digital Health Sciences at SU.
Prof Dr Kris Vanhaecht
He is the Secretary General of the European Pathway Association (www.E-P-A.org), an international not-for-profit association supporting knowlegde sharing, research and teaching on the organisation of care processes. He leads the European Quality of Care Pathway Study, including 3 randomised controlled trials on the impact of care pathways on patient outcomes and interprofessional teamwork. From 2013 onwards, he is the principal investigator in the CP4ACS study (Care Pathways for Acute Coronary Syndrome) and an international study on Care Pathways for Nutrition problems in gastro-intestinal cancer surgery patients (CP4NutriGICan).
In 2017, he launched the In Search of Mangomoments movement on patient-centred care.
Speakers
Dr Dariusz Adamczewski
Dr Dariusz Adamczewski works as a Director of Government Affairs and Policy at Johnson&Johnson Europe.
Dr Eleanor Brooks
Mr Eleanor Brooks is a lecturer in health policy at the Global Health Policy Unit (GHPU), School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. She holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for the period 2020-2024, supporting the Better Regulation for Better Health project. Eleanor is a Scientific Advisor to the European Public Health Alliance, coordinator of UACES Research Network on EU Health Governance and member of the Young Gastein Forum.
Prof Sandra C. Buttigieg
Prof Sandra C. Buttigieg is a Professor and Head of the Department of Health Services Management (HSM), Faculty of Health Sciences, UOM. She is a Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Head-Clinical Performance Unit, and Chair-Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Team, at Mater Dei Hospital. She is the outgoing Global-Representative-at-large of the American Academy of Management-HCM Division. She is a Board Member-at-large and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Health Management Association. She lectures in HSM, Public Health, Family Medicine, Research Methodology and Evidence-based Health Research (EVBRES).
She authored/co-authored several articles in peer-reviewed international journals, and widely participated in international conferences, and congresses. She is on the Editorial Boards of PloS One, Health Services Management Research, International Journal of Human Resources Management, Journal of Health Organization and Management, and Frontiers Public Health. She is Frontiers Topic Editor: “Network for Evaluation of One Health (NEOH) Case Studies”; “Patient Safety: Delivering Cost-Contained, High Quality, Person-Centered, and Safe Healthcare” and “Health Service Management and Leadership: COVID-Style”.
She is a Fellow of two programmes of the Salzburg Global Seminar, related to health care, which were led by amongst others, past presidents of the Institute of Medicine, namely, Donald Berwick and Harvey Fineberg.
Professor Buttigieg has been visiting scholar in the US (JMU -Harrisonburg, VA), UK -University of Birmingham and Aston University, Birmingham, and Kuwait (Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Kuwait University).
Prof Americo Cicchetti
Prof Americo Cicchetti has served as a Professor of Management at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Faculty of Economics, Rome since 2006. He is also currently the Director of the Graduate School of Health Economics and Management at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. In addition to his academic experience, Dr Cicchetti was a member of the Price and Reimbursement Committee of the Italian National Drug Agency from 2009 to 2015. He is a member of the European Network of Health Technology Assessment; Member of the Innovation Steering Group of the National HTA Program for Medical Devices (Ministry of Health, Italy); Member of the National Immunisation Technical Advisory Group at the Ministry of Health, Italy since 2019; Member of the Health and Research Commission of the Rome Foundation since 2007; and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Health and Research Foundation since 2017.
Furthermore, Prof Cicchetti is the Chief Executive Officer and Director for Molipharma, whose core business is the research and development of new drugs and diagnostics aimed at predicting, detecting and treating female oncological diseases. He also serves as an independent board member for Foundation Health and Research, and Leonida SICAF, a fixed capital investment company. He obtained his PhD in Management from the University of Bologna, and his B.A. from the University of Rome.
Ms Emma Cracknell
Ms Emma Cracknell leads FleishmanHillard’s Brussels healthcare team, specifically focusing on strategically advising clients on the development and execution of EU Public Affairs strategies, and European market level public affairs plans for pharmaceutical companies ahead of product launch. Prior to joining FleishmanHillard in 2015, Emma completed GSK’s Communications and Government Relations Future Leader’s Programme, with placements in the Pharmaceutical and Consumer Health businesses in London, UK and Vaccines in Wavre, Belgium.
Ms Isabel de la Mata
Ms Isabel de la Mata is the Principal Adviser for Health and Crisis management in the European Commission. Previously, she worked as Counsellor for Health and Consumers at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU, as Deputy Director General for Health Planning at the Spanish Ministry of Health, as Adviser to the Vice-minister of Health and several other posts at the Ministry of Health of Spain and the Regional Departments in the Basque Country and in Madrid. She has been a member of the EURO-WHO Standing Committee of the Regional Committee, and has worked with the Pan American Health Organisation, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation. Isabel de la Mata graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Basque Country in 1983 and holds post-graduate degrees from the University of Leuven and Paris VI in Public Health, Hospital Administration and Statistics. She is a specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.
Dr Patrick D`Haese
Dr Patrick D`Haese is a s
Through dedicated and personal leadership, he strives to create highly effective, passionate and successful teams enabling companies to realise their full potential. He currently works as a Corporate Director of Awareness and Public Affairs at MED-EL Medical Electronics.
Dr Yvan Devaux
Dr Yvan Devaux is Head of the Cardiovascular Research Unit at the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH).
Using a thoroughly validated experimental pipeline including both discovery and validation phases, Yvan and his group aim to identify novel biomarkers of acute cardiac conditions such as acute myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, heart failure, aortic stenosis and stroke. His research group focuses on RNAs and particularly non-coding RNAs such as microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs.
He founded and coordinates the Cardiolinc network, a consortium of 7 private partners and more than 49 research groups worldwide investigating the role of long non-coding RNAs in cardiac disease.
Ms Sara Doguelli
Ms Sara Doguelli is based in Brussels and works at the European Health Management Association since April 2022. She was born in Istanbul, Turkey where she completed her early education and later moved to the Netherlands, finishing a BSc in International Communication and Media with honours at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her academic career has been further developed with a Master of Arts in Business in International Health and Social Management, from the Management Centre Innsbruck in Austria. She has been combining academic work with health management positions since 2020.
Mr Joaquim Duarte
Mr Joaquim Duarte is the Senior Sustainable Waste Manager at The University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust. The Trust is one of the largest NHS Trusts in the South West of England. Bringing together a combined workforce of over 13,000 staff, the Trust delivers over 100 different clinical services across 10 different sites serving a core population of more than 500,000 people.
Joaquim worked within the Trust for over 16 years, and through his professional progression with the Trust, he has worked in various roles. Working within the Trust Sustainability Team, Joaquim oversees the Sustainable Waste Management strategy and policy within the organisation.
Prof Susanna Esposito
Originally from Milan, Prof Susanna Esposito is a Full Professor of Paediatrics at the Department of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Parma, in addition to holding the role of Director of the Paediatric Clinic of the Pietro Barilla Children’s Hospital. She is President of the World Association for Infectious Diseases and Immunological Disorders (WAidid) and has taught in prestigious national and international universities.
After graduating with honours in Medicine and Surgery, she continues her studies with specialisations in Paediatrics (1999) and Infectious Diseases (2006). She is the Director of the Simple Operating Unit of Paediatric Infectious Disease first, then Director of the Paediatric Clinic I from 2010 to 2013. From 2013 to 2016 she is at the helm of the High-Intensity Paediatric Unit at the IRCCS Ca ‘Granda Foundation Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico dell’ University of Milan. From 2017 to 2019 she heads the S.C. Paediatric Clinic of the Santa Maria Della Misericordia Hospital of Perugia.
Prof Esposito has been writing scientific texts starting from her university years, dealing with paediatric infectious pathology, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of various paediatric diseases in the fields of infectious disease, pulmonology, allergology, immunology, endocrinology, nutrition, rare diseases, and ENT. Her research has resulted in 710 publications in international journals and various articles in national newspapers. In 2012 you identified two new Enteroviruses, C-117 and C-118. To continue her research, she went abroad to important centres such as St George’s Medical Center (London, UK) and Kiremba Hospital (Burundi).
From 2012 to 2015 she was President of the World Health Organization Commission for the eradication of measles and congenital rubella. Since 2013, she has also been the coordinator of the vaccine study group (EVASG) of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. She was president of the Italian Society of Paediatric Infectious Disease (SITIP) from 2011 to 2014, from 2009 she has been for 10 years she is President of the Association for the Sick Child (ABM) Onlus.
During her career she has received several awards: the Amici di Milano Award as the best scientific researcher in 2004, the Ambassador Award for research abroad in the media field awarded by the Honourable Maurizio Lupi in 2011, the certificate of merit for the commitment and professionalism demonstrated for the health of the child in 2014 (Associazione Amici del Policlinico and Mangiagalli).
Dr Nick Fahy
Dr Nicholas Fahy is a researcher and consultant in health policy and systems, looking at how health systems work; what we can learn by comparing health systems across countries; and how to bring about constructive change in health systems.
His background is in international health policy, including over a decade in the European Commission, most recently as head of the unit for health information – a short title for a unit which covered a lot of topics, including generating and mobilising information, data and knowledge for European health policy; leading European policy on major, rare and non-communicable diseases; and issues such as e-health. This led him to work on the health impact of Brexit, as well as wider health policy.
His experience in policy led him to focus on the question of how we can get knowledge into policy and practice in health systems. Despite extensive efforts to generate evidence for better healthcare, gaps in using it in policy and practice remain both significant and stubbornly persistent. Through his research, he aims to better understand why this is. He is particularly interested in the behavioural science dimension of change, as well as drawing on his professional experience to explore how to get evidence into policy and practice.
He is working to put this into practice as
Dr Scott L. Greer
Dr Scott L. Greer is a Professor of Health Management and Policy, Global Public Health, and Political Science (by courtesy) at the University of Michigan and is also a Senior Expert Advisor on Health Governance for the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
He researches the politics of health policies, with a special focus on the politics and policies of the European Union the politics of public health, and the impact of federalism on health care. Before coming to Michigan, he taught at University College London. He has published over a hundred book chapters and articles in journals including the Lancet, British Medical Journal, Milbank Quarterly, American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Social Policy, and Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. His most recent books include Everything you always wanted to know about European Union health policies but were afraid to ask (2014, second edition 2019, third edition forthcoming), Strengthening health system governance: better policies, stronger performance (2015), Federalism and Decentralization in European Health and Social Care (2013), European Union Public Health Policies (2013), Civil Society and Health (2017), Federalism and Social Policy (2019), The European Union after Brexit (2020), The Populist Radical Right and Health (2021) and Coronavirus Politics (2021).
Dr Damien Gruson
Dr Damien Gruson, Pharm. Biol., Eur. Specialist in Laboratory Medicine, worked from 2008 as a specialist in Laboratory Medicine at Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc, an academic hospital in Brussels, Belgium. He is currently the Chief of the Department of Laboratory Medicine of the Cliniques Universitaires Saint Luc and a member of the research unit on Endocrinology Diabetes and Nutrition of the Catholic University of Louvain. He has published numerous articles in several international peer-reviewed journals. He is a member of the executive committee of the division on Emerging Technology of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. Prof. Gruson is also a member of the working group on cardiac markers of the European Federation of Laboratory Medicine. Pr. D. Gruson is also actively participating in the activities of the European Society of Cardiology as a fellow, and of the Belgian Thyroid Club, as a board member.
Mr Ed Harding
Mr Ed Harding has worked for many years in the development of multi-disciplinary policy advocacy networks in health, and in health policy research and writing. He has led several high-level international collaborations in healthcare, many of which have achieved substantial public endorsement. He is a specialist at combining policy research and stakeholder engagement efforts into impactful and original political engagement. This involves working with senior figures in public life from a variety of backgrounds, typically in a highly competitive and often sensitive political environment. Formerly he has led several senior roles in government, NGO sector, and political campaigns.
Recent roles in the Health Policy Partnership portfolio include Programme Director, Heart Failure Policy Network (since 2015) and he has led other international HPP policy and research projects in osteoporosis and CVD risk factor management.
Mr Nabil Jamshed
Mr Nabil Jamshed works as a Head of Corporate Governance for Integrated Specialist Medicine Clinical Group and Chief of Staff at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
He has over 20 years of experience working in the NHS and, internationally, with the Ministry of Public Health and other health agencies in Qatar.
He has operating experience in working with a variety of boards in facilitating the development of effective governance structures and successful board dynamics. He has first-hand experience in introducing constructive governance and risk management models, developing national policy and strategy, working with several Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and understanding and experience in dealing with complex IT systems.
In addition to working with the NHS and health organisations, Nabil had worked in other sectors such as the English Cricket Board and charities, helping with governance and risk management developments and improvements.
As the elected member of the European Health Management Association (EHMA) Scientific Planning Committee, Nabil contributes to wider European healthcare management developments. He has a personal interest in the inclusion agenda and has led various developments within the NHS to support the Equality Diversity and Inclusion efforts and served as a co-chair of the NHS staff BAME network.
Last year, Nabil was appointed as a Non-executive Director at the Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. He contributes to the national development and debate on the Equality Diversity and Inclusion through his active membership with the Seacole group of NHS NED and contributions to the APNA (Asian Professionals’ National Alliance) NHS which is a South Asian Heritage NHS Staff Leaders’ network across health and social care.
Prof Dr Marija Jevtic
Prof Dr Marija Jevtic is a full professor at the University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Medicine, specialist in Hygiene (Public Health) at the Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina with sub specialisation in medical ecology; research collaborator at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Research Centre on Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health; associate member of the Academy of Medical Sciences Serbian Medical Society; group analytic therapist and System Psychodynamic Organizational Consultant; EU Climate Pact Ambassador.
She has 25 years of experience in the research and education process and advocacy in public health and environment and health. Field of interest and work: public health, environment and health, SDGs, climate change, disaster and health, migration, mental health, school health, food safety, nutrition, health management, reproductive and sexual health, group psychotherapy, organizational consulting. As a university professor, she has been involved in different curricula development in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Novi Sad in the field of Public Health, Nursing, Disaster medicine, Nutrition, Medical ecology, and Hygiene. She is also a professor at the Faculty of Technical Sciences University of Novi Sad (undergraduate and postgraduate studies) in the field of disaster and vulnerability, public health and emergencies, mental health and psychosocial support in emergencies).
She has been Director of the Institute of Public Health of Vojvodina; Head of the Department of Hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad; Assistant minister Ministry of Health RS.
Dr Usman Khan
Dr Usman Khan is a visiting professor at KU Leuven.
A health policy and management professional with more than 25 years’ executive-level experience within the public, private and not for profit sectors, Usman spent over a decade working in academia, before moving into health and social care consulting in 2000. As managing director of Matrix Insight until 2012, he led a consultancy team of 30 in delivering impact assessments and related research studies for the European Commission and other related government bodies.
Usman has held a number of high profile non-executive positions in health and social care and currently holds visiting academic positions at George Washington University and New York University (London). Usman holds a PhD from Sheffield University and a BA (Hons) in Economics and Politics from London Metropolitan.
Mr Gaetan Lafortune
Mr Gaetan Lafortune is a Senior Economist in the OECD Health Division. Over the past ten years, Mr Lafortune has acted as the coordinator and editor of the OECD publication ‘Health at a Glance’, which presents international comparisons of health and health systems across European and non-European countries. He has also carried out a number of research projects on the training, remuneration and migration of the health workforce. Before joining the OECD, Mr Lafortune worked on a range of labour market and health policy issues for the Government of Canada in Ottawa. Gaétan Lafortune holds a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Sherbrooke (Canada).
Ms Favelle Lamb
Favelle Lamb has degrees in Food Biosciences, Infectious Disease Control, and Infectious Disease Epidemiology. She is currently working as an Expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in the Emergency Preparedness and Response section. She previously worked in the Corona and Influenza surveillance section and with the Epidemic Intelligence team.
Prof Federico Lega
Prof Federico Lega, PhD, is a Full Professor of Health Administration at the Public Health Department at Milan University, where he runs all courses in healthcare management and policy for medical students and leads the Research Centre in Health Administration (HEAD).
He is also a Professor at SDA Bocconi School of Management (SDA) where he teaches courses in Public Management and Health Services Management. He leads the research in strategy and organisational development in healthcare at the Bocconi Research Center on Health Policy and Management (CERGAS). From 2007 to 2014 he has been the Head of executive education for health managers, clinicians and medical industry leaders at the Bocconi School of Management (SDA).
Since 2015, he is acting as Editor in Chief of the journal Health Services Management Research, Associate Editor of BMC Health Services Research and Medical Care Research Review. He has published eight books and over 150 articles in journals.
As a consultant, he has advised health systems on health policy matters and governance issues, several hospitals and networks in re-organisations, strategy-making processes, value-based approaches, economic evaluations, and process management, both at the national and international level.
In the last ten years, he has advised several companies in the medical industry on their transformation toward value-based models and on the development of effective market-access initiatives. Since 2002 he has coordinated over fifteen initiatives of duality or study tours, involving the exchange of managers and senior clinicians between countries (Italy, UK, USA, Germany and France). He currently sits on the boards of hospitals and local health authorities, advises health departments of regions, national health agencies and insurances, and works as a consultant for WHO.
Dr Alexandre Lourenço
He is a hospital administrator at Coimbra Hospital and University Centre and he coordinates the Postgraduate Programme in Management of Health Institutions at ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management. Moreover, he is an Associate Member of Nova SBE Health Economics and Management Knowledge Centre. Dr Lourenço is also a consultant at the World Health Organization (WHO) for financing, health systems strengthening, and health services delivery.
He is the President of the Portuguese Association of Hospital Managers, Board member of the European Association of Hospital Managers (EAHM), Board member of the European Health Management Association (EHMA), and Honorary Fellow of the Brazillian College of Health Executives (CBExS).
He has co-authored several healthcare policy documents (e.g., Portuguese Ministry of Health, European Commission, World Health Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, International Labour Organization), book chapters, scientific papers, and posters. He has presented keynote talks at several national and international conferences. He is the Exec Editor-in-Chief of the HealthManagement Journal.
Mr Manuel Palazuelos Martinez
Mr Manuel Palazuelos Martinez works for the European Commission, where he is currently leading the Team working on REOPEN EU at the Directorate for Growth and Innovation, European Commission of the DG Joint Research Centre. Previously, he developed a good part of his career at DG ECFIN, the Directorate General of Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Commission in Brussels, where he held several relevant positions. Prior to joining the Commission, Manuel Palazuelos taught in university for five years, at the Department of Economics of the London School of Economics (LSE), where he was awarded five annual prizes for excellence in teaching, including a national UK award. He also completed his postgraduate studies in European economics at the London School of Economics, as well as other Master’s, postgraduate and university graduate degrees in both Spain and the UK, mostly in subjects related to international economics, obtaining many academic distinctions and awards. Manuel has around 35 publications in international economics, and he has presented his research at numerous universities such as Columbia in NY, Oxford, Cambridge, The London School of Economics and Georgetown in Washington DC, where he also received the best paper award.
Ms Nicole Mauer
Nicole is a Technical Officer based at the Observatory’s Secretariat in Brussels.
Her work focuses on evidence-based health policy and health systems in Europe. She is involved in the Observatory’s work on health systems innovation, co-authoring policy briefs and supporting the Observatory’s knowledge brokering activities.
Before joining the Observatory, Nicole worked as a Blue Book Trainee at the European Commission’s Directorate General for Health and Food Safety, where her work focused on health information and the State of Health in the EU cycle. She has also gained experience at national level, working as a Scientific Officer at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin with a focus on Global Health projects in low- and middle-income settings.
Nicole holds a Medical Degree from the University of Milan, Italy and is currently a fellow and doctoral researcher at the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Germany. Her research interests include health inequalities, health policy and systems research and the socioeconomic determinants of health.
She is a member of the German-Italian Young Leaders Dialogue (Spinelli Forum) endorsed by the German Council on Foreign Relations and the Italian Institute for International Political Studies.
Dr Marilia Paulo
Dr Marilia Paulo has a PhD in Health Policies and Development from NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. She has worked on Health Services Research, Health Workforce development, and Environmental/Occupational health in the United Arab Emirates. Has also worked on systematic reviews and metanalyses of environmental and occupational health exposures and nowadays is committed to advancing health information systems through the Population Health Information Research Infrastructure (PHIRI) project from the European Commission. She is a member of several committees and international networks like the Climate Change and Public health Research Network from the Ministry of Environment of the UAE and the Coordination and Harmonisation of European Occupational Cohorts (OMEGA-NET).
Ms Sabrina Montante
Ms Sabrina Montante is a Senior EU Policy Advisor at Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Brussels Liaison Office and She is an expert on EU Policy and Programmes with a focus on public health and health research topics. She has a deep knowledge of the mechanisms, policies, legislations and procedures of the European Union.
In the last years, her work has been focused mainly on improving strategies and initiatives at the EU level supporting innovation in health systems. Sabrina has over fifteen years of public policy, multi-level governance and management experience in the health sector. She has worked with International and EU organisations, research entities, and national and regional offices so far. Sabrina has directly contributed to several high-level EU and international initiatives. She earned a Master of Laws degree from the University of Bologna and a Project Management graduate certificate from Boston University.
Dr Joan Prades
Joan Prades is a healthcare service and policy researcher with more than 10 years of experience within the cancer field. Having as main focus the analysis and planning of organisational models in cancer care, he has published different articles on centralisation policies, multidisciplinary teams and their impact on care processes, the dissemination of innovations in radiotherapy or the creation of fast-tracks between primary and specialised care for cancer suspicions’ detection.
MEP Manuel Pizarro
Manuel Pizarro is a Portuguese politician of the Socialist Party who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since the 2019 elections.
Pizzaro has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2019 European elections. In parliament, he has since been serving on the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs and the Committee on Fisheries.
In addition to his committee assignments, Pizzaro is part of the parliament’s delegation for relations with Brazil. He is also a member of the URBAN Intergroup.
Mr Justin Rautenberg
Mr Justin Rautenberg currently works as Senior Manager of Project Development at OptiMedis AG. In November 2020 he took over the management of Gesunder Schwalm-Eder-Kreis+ GmbH, a regional health management company of which OptiMedis is a shareholder. Justin Rautenberg has a degree in business administration and worked for many years at the leading international management consultancy Accenture, most recently as a partner and managing director, as well as at other large and medium-sized IT consulting and service companies. He was also interim Chief Information Officer in a regional hospital association.
He has more than 15 years of programme and project management experience in the areas of healthcare and social security – with a focus on statutory health insurance/private health insurance, hospitals and life sciences. His focus is on these areas: strategy development/implementation, organisational development, performance and care management, population health, negotiation, IT management and renewal, hospital and rehabilitation information systems, as well as networking, e-health and telematics.
Dr Kirsty Reid
Dr Francisco Ribeiro-Mourão
Dr Francisco Ribeiro Mourão is a consultant in Pediatrics at Centro Materno Infantil do Norte – Centro Hospitalar e Universitário do Porto, Portugal.
He has been actively involved in several professional organisations and is currently treasurer of the European Junior Doctors Association – an organisation representing more than 300.000 Junior Doctors in Europe. Francisco has a special interest in Pediatric Gastroenterology and is doing his PhD at the University of Porto.
Dr Josep Roca
Dr Josep Roca is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Barcelona, Coordinator of Innovation at the Institut Clinic del Tòrax (ICT), Hospital Clínic (Barcelona), and Coordinator of BioHealth Computing Erasmus Mundus in Barcelona and senior researcher at IDIBAPS. He authored more than 220 original articles in peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters, review articles and books. His two main fields of interest are chronic diseases: integrated care, systems medicine, predictive medicine, information and communication technologies (ICT); and, O2 pathway – cell bioenergetics relationships: biological mechanisms and impact at the system level, non-invasive assessment, exercise, rehabilitation and wellness. Dr Roca has been the coordinator of several EU projects and is currently a member of the ACT consortium – Advancing Coordinated Care and Telehealth (www.act-programme.eu/).
Ms Anett Ruszanov
Ms Anett Ruszanov is the Programme and Policy Director at EHMA. Anett is a committed professional with eighteen years’ work experience in Brussels.
Her special expertise lies in project acquisition and management, stakeholder engagement, co-creation with stakeholders, event organisation, community management, moderation, and producing evidence-based policy recommendations. She has a proven track record in research and innovation policy, particularly in the healthcare field. Anett has extensive experience with member-based networks: designing and providing services to members and managing membership relations.
She has a background in European studies and project management. Before EHMA, Anett worked for the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), was managing projects at the European Regions Research and Innovation Network (ERRIN) for 11 years, and was heading a regional office and worked for Business Hungary for 4 years.
Ms Anna Sagan
Ms Anna Sagan is a Research Fellow at the European Observatory on Health Systems. She works in the Observatory’s London hub, sharing her time between the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
She is also an author and editor of Observatory studies, most recently on private health insurance, Health Systems in Transition (HiT) reviews, and Health country profiles – Health Systems and Policy Monitor (HSPM) and COVID-19 Health Systems Response Monitor (HSRM) profiles and State of Health in the EU (SoHEU) profiles. Anna obtained her master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Jagiellonian University in Poland.
MEP Alex Agius Saliba
Alex Agius Saliba is a Maltese politician who was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2019 on behalf of the Labour Party.
Agius Saliba was a journalist for 5 years before he graduated as a lawyer. Since then, he has worked as a legal advisor to a number of Ministers, including Ministers Helena Dalli (Malta’s European Commissioner) and Ian Borg, and Parliamentary Secretary Stefan Buontempo. He was appointed as Head of the European Union Secretariat in 2017 but stepped down to contest elections in 2018.
After being successfully elected to the European Parliament, Alex Agius Saliba has been serving on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, the Committee on Petitions as Coordinator and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. In addition to his committee assignments, he is part of the Parliament’s delegations to the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, Delegation for Relations with Palestine and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean. Agius Saliba was also appointed as co-chair of the MEP Alliance for Mental Health and Vice-President of the Biodiversity, Hunting, Countryside Intergroup.
Mr Agius Saliba is also leading the negotiations on behalf of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament on the Common Charger Resolution. The European Parliament approved the resolution by an overwhelming majority a proposal.
Agius Saliba was also appointed as rapporteur of the Digital Services Act by the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee and the Right to Disconnect by the Employment Committee at the European Parliament. He was also appointed as the rapporteur on the protection of Persons with Disabilities by the Committee on Petitions.
Ms Yuliya Shcherbina
As Health Assessment Europe’s Development Lead, Ms Yuliya Shcherbina works with healthcare providers to facilitate the implementation of accreditation and quality improvement programs from Health Assessment Europe (HAE) and their affiliates, Accreditation Canada (AC) and Health Standards Organization (HSO). Yuliya has 10 years of experience in international development, working on a variety of health quality improvement, relationship building, and communications projects. Since joining HAE five years ago, she has initiated and overseen the implementation of several accreditation projects by healthcare organizations located primarily in Southern Europe.
Prior to her current role, Yuliya also worked for the Canadian Stem Cell Foundation, developing and managing relationship building projects between clinicians, scientists and the community. In this role, Yuliya also worked with patients to facilitate knowledge building on advancements in stem cell research and the impact of clinical trials on patient care, both domestically and internationally.
In addition to working in various EU countries and North America, Yuliya is fluent in several languages including English, Italian, French, Spanish, Ukrainian and Russian. Yuliya Shcherbina holds a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations and a Master’s Degree in Administration and Management in Healthcare.
Mr Kuno Strand Kudajewski
Mr Kuno Strand Kudajewski currently works as a Project Manager at the Health Innovation Centre of Southern Denmark.
Dr Hanna Tolonen
Dr Hanna Tolonen has a PhD in public health and epidemiology, MSc in Statistics, and a degree in Specialist Qualification in Management. She is working as a Director of a research programme on Challenges and Solutions to Population Health and Welfare at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). She is a vice-president of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) section on Public Health Monitoring and Reporting. She has worked for over 20 years in the field of health information, especially on the standardisation of health examination surveys. In the Population Health Information Research Infrastructure (PHIRI) project, she is leading the work package responsible for the development of the contents of the health information portal.
Mr Jon Txarramendieta
Mr Jon Txarramendieta holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering in Industrial Organisation from the University of Deusto (2010) and a master’s degree in Health Management from Deusto Business School (2015). In 2017, he completed the Expert Course in Health Services and Chronic Diseases Research. He has experience in the implementation of health services in national and European project contexts. Since 2016, he has worked as a Project Manager at Kronikgune, where he has been involved in several EU-funded projects including Mastermind, ACT@Scale, SCIROCCO, SCIROCCO Exchange and the JA CHRODIS Plus.
Mr George Valiotis
Mr George Valiotis is the Executive Director of the European Health Management Association (EHMA).
He has worked in executive roles specialising in health policy, research, systems thinking, management, human rights, education, and training.
Before joining EHMA, he worked as Chief Executive Officer of HIV Scotland for seven years, managing multiple strategic policy and education collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, researchers, policymakers, insurers, health services, community members, and professional medical bodies. Earlier he was an education specialist for the International AIDS Society, developing global initiatives for pre and post-doctoral researchers in prevention, clinical and biomedical research. He also served on the Board of Diabetes Australia and as an Advisor on its Medical Education and Science Council. In these roles, he helped govern the National Diabetes Services Scheme which was a €65 million government contract to supply medical products, education, and services.
Prof em. Dr Paul Van de Heyning
Prof Paul Van de Heyning is an ENT and Head and Neck Surgeon specialising in Otology, Neurotology and Cochlear implants. He is Emeritus Full Professor, former chairman and still consultant of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery Antwerp University Hospital and former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of Antwerp University Belgium.
His main scientific interests concern hearing loss, inner ear disorders and cochlear implantation. He is the author and co-author of more than 600 peer-reviewed publications and supervisor of 70 PhD thesis.
He is a founding member and vice-chairman of HEARRING and in 2018 he was president of the XV International Conference on Cochlear Implants and other auditory implantable devices.
Dr Suzanne Wait
Dr Suzanne Wait co-founded The Health Policy Partnership in 2015.
In a health policy career spanning more than 20 years, Suzanne has helped to run multi-stakeholder initiatives in numerous disease areas. She has broad knowledge of the challenges of intersectoral working and the need for sustainable and person-focused healthcare systems.
Having begun her career at IRDES, the French national centre for health economics in Paris, she worked as Global Health Economist at Novartis Pharma and later as Associate Director of Health Outcomes for Europe and the UK at Bristol-Myers Squibb. She went on to become Director of Research at the International Longevity Centre – UK. She was also a founding member of the European Nutrition for Health Alliance, and is a member of the Coalition to Eradicate Viral Hepatitis in Asia Pacific (CEVHAP).
Suzanne has authored numerous peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and policy reports. She spent five years teaching at the School of Public Policy at University College London, is a former Nuffield Trust Research Fellow at the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge University, and was Adjunct Professor at the University of Strasbourg. She is now a Visiting Lecturer at the University College London Global Business School for Health.
Suzanne has a Master of Public Health from Columbia University and a PhD in Public Health from the University of Strasbourg. In 2006, she completed a Nuffield Trust-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge, which looked at benchmarking health systems and public involvement in healthcare.
She is fluent in English, French, Italian and Spanish, and has a good working knowledge of German.
Ms Solvejg Wallyn
Since 2009, Ms Solvejg Wallyn has been a Policy Officer in the Flanders Agency for Care and Health in Belgium, where she is dealing with all international and bilateral matters in health that are in the remit of the regional competences. These competences have been enlarged to include primary care, mental health care, elderly care and some aspects of specialised care.
Ms Wallyn has a degree in law from Brussels University. She has worked in Sciensano and helped transpose the two Genetically modified Organisms and Micro-organisms EU Directives into Belgian legislation. She was the administrator of the European Programme on Intervention Epidemiology and the EU Rapid Response to Health Crises. She set up the Committee on Ethical issues in Sciensano and worked in the European Commission, Health Threats Unit, DG for Health and was a scientific officer in the Executive Agency.
Ms Emmi Weller
Ms Emmi Weller is a Policy Officer at the European Health Management Association (EHMA). She coordinates EHMA’s involvement in policy networks and engagement with decision-makers and leads on producing EHMA’s publication ‘Reducing the environmental impact of medicines from procurement to disposal’, written from a health management perspective.
Emmi is a qualified health manager and graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Master’s degree in European Health Economics and Management taught jointly by the University of Oslo (Norway), the University of Bologna (Italy) and the Management Centre Innsbruck (Austria). Her first degree is in Global Public Health which she obtained at Leiden University College (The Netherlands).
Prof Kristin Wilson
Prof Kristin Wilson is a professor of health management and policy at Saint Louis University’s College for Public Health and Social Justice.
Dr Wilson’s portfolio of experience and education includes leadership, strategy, health policy, healthcare management, programme/project management, strategy, quality, community health needs assessment/planning and evaluation at the local, state, national, and international levels. For most of her career, she has been working to improve population health and impact community benefit through the intersection of public health and healthcare through various leadership positions and through her research.
Dr Wilson’s current collaborative research and practice interests include: health policy and community benefit; institutionalisation and sustainability of best practices and programmes; interaction of organisations in communities to improve health; the intersection and collaboration of organisations to improve population-level health and healthcare, and health systems strengthening.
Dr Wilson teaches both graduate and undergraduate students in health policy, and healthcare management, and leads a global healthcare leadership and management immersion experience.
Dr Matthias Wismar
Dr Matthias Wismar is a Programme Manager at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies based in Brussels.
His work focuses on health policy, politics and governance, the health workforce, European integration and intersectoral action and the Sustainable Development Goals. He is developing studies, policy briefs, rapid responses and face-to-face dissemination and knowledge brokering formats, including policy dialogues, evidence briefings and webinars.
Matthias holds a PhD in Political Science from Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.
Mr Richard Osei Yeboah
Mr Richard Osei-Yeboah is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Global Health, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK. Richard is currently working on two Innovative Medicines Initiative (now Innovative Health Initiative) funded projects – the REspiratory Syncytial virus Consortium in EUrope (RESCEU) and Preparing for RSV Immunisation and Surveillance in Europe (PRomISE) which both focus on using routinely collected linked health data to describe the burden of RSV in Europe.
Richard completed a Master of Public Health (Epidemiology and Disease Control) degree from the University of Ghana and has recently completed his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa having been awarded the European Union’s Intra-Africa Mobility fellowship. He has presented papers at the International Workshop on Comorbidities and Adverse Drug Reactions workshop and European AIDS Conference in Switzerland and the International Conference on AIDS & STIs in Africa in Kigali, Rwanda and has participated in numerous conferences on infectious diseases. Richard has an interest in infectious disease epidemiology research.