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Workshop Speaker Biographies
Speaker and Moderator Bios
Global Health Risk Framework: Governance for Global Health
September 1-2, 2015
Ximena Aguilera, M.D., is Director of the Centre of Epidemiology and Public Health Policies at the Faculty of Medicine Universidad del Desarrollo in Chile. She was Senior Advisor in Communicable Diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for the Americas (2008-2010), where among other duties she coordinated the technical response to the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic. Previously she was the Chief of Health Planning Division at the Ministry of Health in Chile (2005-2008) and Head of the Department of Epidemiology at the same institution (1999-2005). Dr. Aguilera was the Chilean representative during the negotiations on the revision of the International Health Regulations, and official delegate for Asia-Pacific Economic Forum Health Working Group, and for MERCOSUR sub-working group on health. In addition, she was primarily responsible for pandemic preparedness and for the implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005) at the Ministry of Health of Chile. Dr. Aguilera has worked as consultant for the WHO Regional Office for the Americas, the United Nations Development Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank in several countries in Latin America and participated in the WHO mission in response to the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in China (2003). She has been a member of the Advisory Committee of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network of WHO.
Benjamin Chukwudum Anyene, M.D., is trained as a medical doctor and a microbiologist. He attended courses including the World Bank Institute course in health sector reform, health economics, and financing. His areas of interest are health and development with primary focus on primary
health care and immunization systems reforms. He has broad experience as a public, private, and nonstate actor in health. He was Health Commissioner in Anambra State, Nigeria; UK Department for International Development (DFID) health programmes consultant to Health Ministers on Policy, Plans and Systems Development; and Coordinator of the DFID-supported Federal Ministry of Health Health Sector Reform/Health Millennium Development Goals Technical Team. He was a Board member and Chairman Board Technical Committee, National Primary Health Care Development Agency, 2001-2003 and 2013-2015. He led the development, advocacy for, and passage by the National Assembly and presidential assent of the National Health Bill (2004-2014). He was the National Policy/ Immunization Advisor (2008-2014), DFID and Norwegian Government program (PRRINN-MNCH) for Revitalizing Routine Immunization and Maternal Newborn and Child Health in Northern Nigeria, Chairman of the National Health Sector Reform Coalition, Chairman of the Board Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria (HERFON), Vice Chairman of the White Ribbon Alliance Nigeria for Safe Motherhood, member of the Nigeria Academy of Science Vaccines and Immunization Committee, and Chairman of the National Vaccine Financing Task Team.
Margaret Chan, M.D., is the Director-General of WHO and was first appointed by the World Health Assembly (WHA) on November 9, 2006. The Assembly appointed Dr. Chan for a second 5-year term at its 65th session in May 2012. Dr Chan’s current term began on July 1, 2012, and will continue until June 30, 2017. Before being elected Director-General, Dr. Chan was WHO Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases as well as Representative of the Director-General for Pandemic Influenza.
Prior to joining WHO, she was Director of Health in Hong Kong. During her 9-year tenure as director, Dr. Chan confronted the first human outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in 1997. She successfully defeated the spate of SARS in Hong Kong in 2003. She also launched new services to prevent disease and promote better health.
Charles Clift, Ph.D., is a Senior Consulting Fellow in the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House. He was responsible for coordinating the work of Chatham House’s high-level working group on governance and writing the report arising from the working group: What’s the World Health Organization For? Previously he was an economist at the UK Department for International Development. In addition to his work for Chatham House, he has been a consultant to UNITAID, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Access to Medicine Foundation, and the World Health Organization. He is also chair of the board of the Medicines Patent Pool Foundation.
Claude de Ville de Goyet, M.D., a Belgian medical doctor, was the first director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium (1974-1977). As director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) Disaster Management Programme from 1977 to 2002, he coordinated the international health response to major outbreaks, natural disasters, and conflicts in Latin America and the Caribbean during 25 years.
He was team leader in many evaluations in earthquakes in Iran (2003), Pakistan (2005), and Haiti (2010); tsunamis (2004), hurricanes, and floods in the Caribbean and Latin America; and conflicts in Europe (Kosovo, Bosnia), Africa (Darfur), and the Middle East (Gaza). Acting temporarily as WHO Representative during the peak of the cholera outbreak in Haiti, he launched an external evaluation. More recently, he advised the European Union on the Ebola Recovery Assessment through field visits and close coordination with the national health authorities in the affected countries.
His career in the UN and missions for The Red Cross System, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or bilateral donors gave him an in-depth knowledge of the complex interplay of humanitarian actors and local health authorities in all types of major crises. He wrote numerous articles and chapters in books on disaster health management.
Chris Elias, M.D., is the President of the Global Development Program at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he leads the foundation’s efforts in a diverse range of program areas aimed at finding creative new ways to ensure solutions and products get into the hands of people in poor countries who need them most. Focusing on areas with the potential for high-impact, sustainable solutions that can reach hundreds of millions of people, Dr. Elias oversees Global Development’s portfolio in agriculture development; emergency response; family planning; financial services for the poor; maternal, newborn, and child health; nutrition; polio eradication; vaccine delivery; and water, sanitation, and hygiene. A common theme of these programs is innovative and integrated delivery, including an emphasis on strengthening of primary health care systems.
Dr. Elias’s professional background is in public health and medicine. Prior to joining the Gates Foundation in February 2012, he worked in various positions and countries for international nonprofit organizations, most recently serving as the president and CEO of PATH, an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health of people around the world by advancing technologies, strengthening systems, and encouraging healthy behaviors.
Dr. Elias holds an M.D. from Creighton University, having completed postgraduate training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an M.P.H. from the University of Washington, where he
was a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Tim Evans, D.Phil., is the Senior Director of Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank Group. From 2010 to 2013, Dr. Evans was Dean of the James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Senior Advisor to the BRAC Health Program. From 2003 to 2010, he was Assistant Director-General at WHO. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Health Equity Theme at The Rockefeller Foundation. Earlier in his career he was an attending physician of internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and was Assistant Professor in International Health Economics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is a board member of a number of international health alliances.
Dr. Evans has been at the forefront of advancing global health equity and strengthening health systems delivery for more than 20 years. At WHO, he led the Commission on Social Determinants of Health and oversaw the production of the annual World Health Report. He has been a co-founder of many partnerships including the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization as well as efforts to increase access to HIV treatment for mothers and innovative approaches to training community-based midwives in Bangladesh.
Dr. Evans received his medical degree from McMaster University in Canada and was a research and internal medicine resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He earned a D.Phil. in agricultural economics from University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Jeremy Farrar, D.Phil., is Director of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds. Before joining the Trust he was Director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, where his research interests were in infectious diseases, tropical health, and emerging infections. He has contributed to 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and has served on several World Health Organization advisory committees.
Dr. Farrar was appointed OBE in 2005 for services to tropical medicine, and he has been awarded the Memorial Medal and Ho Chi Minh City Medal from the government of Vietnam, the Frederick Murgatroyd Prize for Tropical Medicine by the Royal College Physicians, and the Bailey Ash-ford Award by the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of The Royal Society.
David P. Fidler, J.D., is one of the world’s leading experts on international law and global health. He is the James Louis Calamaras Professor at the
Indiana University Maurer School of Law, an associate fellow at the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, and a distinguished visitor at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. He is a member of the Harvard University–London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Independent Panel on the Global Response to the Ebola Outbreak. Fidler has served as an international legal consultant to WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He has twice been appointed by WHO’s Director-General as a member of the International Health Regulations (IHR) Roster of Experts, which advises the director general on matters relating to the IHR (2005). He holds degrees from Harvard Law School and the University of Oxford.
Harvey Fineberg, M.D., Ph.D., is the President of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and interim chief program officer for its Patient Care Program. He previously held the Presidential Chair for 2014-2015 as visiting professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to that, he served as president of the Institute of Medicine from 2002 to 2014 and as provost of Harvard University from 1997 to 2001, following 13 years as dean of the Harvard School of Public Health. He has devoted most of his academic career to the fields of health policy and medical decision making. His past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations.
Dr. Fineberg chairs the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and serves on the boards of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the China Medical Board. He helped found and served as president of the Society for Medical Decision Making and also served as consultant to the World Health Organization.
Dr. Fineberg is co-author of the books Clinical Decision Analysis, Innovators in Physician Education, and The Epidemic That Never Was, an analysis of the controversial federal immunization program against swine flu in 1976. He has co-edited several books on such diverse topics as AIDS prevention, vaccine safety, understanding risk in society, and global health. He has also authored numerous articles published in professional journals. Dr. Fineberg is the recipient of several honorary degrees—the Frank A. Calderone Prize in Public Health, the Henry G. Friesen International Prize in Health Research, and the Harvard Medal, awarded by the alumni association of the university from which he earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees.
Lawrence O. Gostin, J.D., is University Professor (Georgetown University’s highest academic rank), O’Neill Chair in Global Health Law, and Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Professor
Gostin holds international professorial appointments at Oxford University, University of Witwatersrand, and Melbourne University. He is Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights, and serves on expert WHO advisory committees mental health, International Health Regulations, and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness. Professor Gostin holds editorial appointments, notably for the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Professor Gostin holds honorary doctoral degrees from the State University of New York, Cardiff University, Sydney University, and the Royal Institute of Public Health. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Council of Foreign Relations, and Hastings Center. The National Academy awarded Professor Gostin the Yarmolinsky Medal for distinguished service to further its mission of science and health. He received the Public Health Law Association’s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award.
Professor Gostin received the Delbridge Memorial Award in the United Kingdom as the person “who has most influenced Parliament and government to act for the welfare of society.” His latest book is Global Health Law (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., is the former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, having stepped down from that role in April 2015 after almost 6 years of service. Dr. Hamburg earned her B.A. from Harvard College and her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed her medical residency at Weill Cornell Medical Center.
In 1991, Dr. Hamburg was named Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health. During her 6-year tenure there, she implemented rigorous public health initiatives that tackled the city’s most pressing crises head-on, including improved services for women and children, an internationally recognized tuberculosis control program, a needle-exchange program to combat HIV transmission, and the nation’s first public health bioterrorism defense program. In 1997, President Clinton named Dr. Hamburg Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She later became founding Vice President for Biological Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a foundation dedicated to reducing the threat to public safety from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
In March 2009, President Obama nominated Dr. Hamburg for the post of U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner. In that role, Dr. Hamburg emphasized the critical need for innovation in meeting medical care and public health needs. As Commissioner, she provided leadership on many groundbreaking activities, including implementation of new authorities to regulate tobacco products, new legislation designed to transform our nation’s food safety system to one based on prevention rather than
simply responding when outbreaks occur, and modernization of the system for the evaluation and approval of medical products.
Dr. Hamburg is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American College of Physicians, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Academy of Medicine, where she serves as Foreign Secretary.
David L. Heymann, M.D. (CBE), is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine; Head of the Centre on Global Health Security at Chatham House, London; and Chairman of Public Health England, United Kingdom. Previously he was the World Health Organization’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security and Environment, and Representative of the Director-General for polio eradication. From 1998 to 2003 he was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster, during which he headed the global response to SARS. Before joining WHO, Professor Heymann worked for 13 years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa on assignment from CDC where, as well as supporting ministries of health in research, he participated in the first and second outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever. Prior to joining CDC, Professor Heymann worked in India for 2 years in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medicine (United States) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) and has been awarded several public health awards. In 2009 Professor Heymann was appointed an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for service to global public health.
Mark Heywood is the Executive Director of Section27. Section27 was established in May 2010. It incorporates the AIDS Law Project (ALP), one of South Africa’s most successful post-apartheid human rights organizations. Section27 is a public interest law center that seeks to influence, develop, and use the law to protect, promote, and advance human rights. Mr. Heywood grew up in Botswana, England, Ghana, and Nigeria. He holds a B.A. (Hons) in English Language and Literature from Balliol College, Oxford University. After graduating from Oxford in 1986, he worked for the Marxist Workers Tendency of the African National Congress, first in London and then from 1989 to 1994 in South Africa. During this time he was instrumental in setting up campaigns such as the Philemon Mauku Defence Campaign, the Leeukop Political Prisoners Support Committee, and the Johannesburg Inner City Community Forum. He also researched and wrote a dissertation for an M.A. in African literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and lectured and wrote on the influences of Shakespeare on African writing and politics in South Africa.
Mr. Heywood joined the ALP in 1994, becoming its head in 1997 and executive director in 2006. In 1998, he was one of the founders of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). In 2007, he was elected as deputy chairperson of the South African National AIDS Council, a position he held until 2012. From 2006 to 2012 he was the chairperson of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Reference Group on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. In 2009, Mr. Heywood was appointed as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on National Health Insurance. Mr. Heywood has written extensively on HIV, human rights, and the law, including co-editing the AIDS and the Law Resource Manual and Health & Democracy: A Guide to Human Rights, Health Law and Policy in Post-Apartheid South Africa. He has been part of the legal teams of the ALP and TAC that have been involved in all the major litigation around HIV and human rights.
Ilona Kickbusch, Ph.D., is currently the Director of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and director of Kickbusch Health Consult. Professor Kickbusch has had a distinguished career with the World Health Organization. Most recently she was a member of the Ebola Interim Assessment Panel, to undertake an assessment on all aspects of WHO’s response in the Ebola outbreak. The panel presented its first progress report to the 68th WHA in May 2015 and the second report in July 2015. She was also responsible for the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, a seminal document in public health. She developed the “settings” approach and initiated programs such as Healthy Cities, health-promoting schools, healthy workplaces, health-promoting hospitals, and health in prisons. She also initiated WHO’s Health Behavior in School-aged Children Study. Professor Kickbusch has published and advised widely on health in all policies (HIAP) approaches. Most recently, she conducted a study on governance for health for WHO/Europe and has been deeply involved in the development of Health 2020, the European health policy framework. She is developing training materials for WHO on HIAP and was engaged in the global HIAP conference in Finland in 2013. She is also a member of a commission that advises on the future health of Portugal and serves on the boards of the Careum Foundation and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics.
Ann Marie Kimball, M.D., is a physician and epidemiologist. A strategic advisor for The Rockefeller Foundation, she served as technical and strategic lead for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation surveillance strategy formation. This 3-year process resulted in the first approved surveillance strategy in the history of that Foundation. Prior to her recruitment as Senior Program Officer, Surveillance and Epidemiology for the Foundation, she
served as Professor of Epidemiology for the University of Washington (UW) School of Public Health with adjunct appointments in medicine (bioinformatics and infectious diseases) and the Jackson School of Foreign Affairs. She attended clinically at Harborview Medical Center. She is emerita at this time. During her tenure at UW, Dr. Kimball founded and directed the APEC Emerging Infections Network, and led research and training programs in Surveillance and Informatics in Peru and Thailand. Her research focus on global trade and emerging infections earned her a Fulbright New Century Scholars award and a Guggenheim Scholars award. She is the author of Risky Trade: Infectious Diseases in an Era of Global Trade (Ashgate, 2006), which was highly reviewed by the New England Journal of Medicine, Emerging Infections, and Lancet. She has authored numerous scientific publications, and served on numerous Institute of Medicine panels. Most recently she led The Rockefeller Foundation evaluation of their global Disease Surveillance Network portfolio. She is a fellow in the American College of Preventive Medicine and member of the National Biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee (NBAS) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A former Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the CDC in Atlanta, prior to joining UW she worked and lived in the Yemen Arab Republic, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. She served as Director of National Program Support for PAHO, directing the elaboration and implementation of medium-term AIDS plans in member countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. She has served as Director of HIV/AIDS for Washington State, and was the founding Chair of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors in the United States.
Joanne Liu, M.D., has been the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International President since October 1, 2013. She first started with MSF in 1996, when she worked with Malian refugees in Mauritania. She subsequently provided support in Indonesia after the tsunami, assisted people affected by the earthquake and cholera epidemic in Haiti, and worked with Somali refugees in Kenya. She also helped develop one of the first programs offering comprehensive medical care for survivors of sexual violence in the Republic of the Congo. She has worked in many conflict zones, including in Palestine, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, and Sudan’s Darfur region. Dr. Liu helped create the telemedicine project, which connects MSF physicians in 150 remote sites with a pool of more than 300 medical specialists across the globe.
Born in Quebec City, Canada, Dr. Liu decided to become a pediatrician at an early age. She trained at McGill University, School of Medicine, specializing in pediatrics at Montreal’s Sainte-Justine Hospital. She has a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine from New York University,
School of Medicine, a diploma in tropical medicine from Cayeto Heredia University in Lima, Peru, and an international master’s degree in health leadership from McGill University. She is an associate professor at the Université de Montréal and a professor of practice at McGill University.
Daniel López-Acuña, M.D., born in Mexico City in 1954, is both a Mexican and Spanish national. He graduated as a Medical Doctor from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1978 and did both his master’s and doctoral studies in public health at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been a faculty member of the School of Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and at the School of Public Health of Mexico, and visiting professor at several universities in the United States, Spain, and Latin America in fields such as epidemiology, health systems, health planning, and health economics.
Between 1986 and 2005, he worked for the Pan American Health Organization WHO Regional Office for the Americas in different capacities, including the positions of Director of Health Systems and Director of Program Management. Since 2006 until May 2011 he worked as Director Health Action in Crisis in the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva. In June 2011 he was appointed Adviser to the Director-General of the World Health Organization. In this capacity he has been supporting the design and implementation of WHO’s Reform. In August 2013 he was appointed Director of Country Cooperation and Collaboration with the United Nations System at the World Health Organization.
Dr. López-Acuña was responsible for organizing the discussions on migrants health during the 2008 WHA and of coordinating the WHO work for implementing the resolution approved to that effect. He also coordinated the Global Consultation on Migrant’s Health that took place in 2010 in Madrid, Spain. He represented WHO at the Global Migration Group. In his last assignment in WHO he represented WHO in the United Nations Development Group Assistant Secretary-General Advisory Group, in the High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) and occasionally in the High-Level Committee on Management (HLCM), all of them subsidiary mechanisms of coordination of the Chief Executives Board for Coordination of United Nations (UN) System. As part of this he has been involved in the discussions on repositioning the UN System in light of the post-2015 agenda.
Dr. López-Acuña has published several books and specialized papers. He is a member of the editorial boards of a number of technical and periodical journals. Among the books published, two of them have had wide dissemination: La Salud Desigual en Meéxico, originally published in 1980 and currently in its ninth edition, and La Salud Ambiental en Meéxico, published in 1986. He coordinated the publication titled Public Health in
the Americas, launched by PAHO/WHO in 2002. He retired from WHO in November 2014 and since then has been an independent public health and health systems consultant residing in Gijon, Spain.
Rebecca Marmot heads Unilever’s Global Partnerships team including setting up and now running the inaugural Unilever Foundation. Through building global partnerships and the Foundation, Rebecca has created programs that focus on the core areas of Unilever’s value chain from sustainable sourcing through to consumer access (particularly focusing on women’s economic empowerment) to drinking water, hygiene, sanitation, basic nutrition, and self-esteem. The Unilever Foundation seeks to maximize the positive social impact Unilever can make, as the business continues to grow. She is also a Board Director for Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
Colin McIff, M.P.I.A., currently serves as the Senior Health Attaché at the U.S. Mission in Geneva. Since his 2010 arrival in Geneva, Mr. McIff has chaired or co-chaired negotiations on some of the most sensitive issues facing the global health community. In the context of the World Health Organization, Mr. McIff has negotiated resolutions on noncommunicable diseases, on the role of the health sector in addressing interpersonal violence, and on strengthening the International Health Regulations, and, most recently, with South Africa he co-chaired the negotiations on the Ebola resolution during the WHO Special Session. Before his posting as Health Attaché at the U.S. Mission in Geneva, Mr. McIff was the Acting Director for Multilateral Affairs at the Office of Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, leading U.S. negotiations on the Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel adopted by consensus at the 63rd WHA. Mr. McIff served as Multilateral Organizations Officer for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) at the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator. While with PEPFAR, Mr. McIff led coordination efforts with multilateral organization partners such as UNAIDS, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Prior to joining PEPFAR, Mr. McIff served with the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, and the Office of Japan Affairs at the U.S. Department of State and with the U.S. Agency for International Development. During his State Department career Mr. McIff covered a wide range of multilateral organizations, among them, the UN General Assembly, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Joy Phumaphi is the Executive Secretary of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance, a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on
the Global Response to Health Crises, and Chair of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health. She served as Member of Parliament in Botswana, holding portfolio responsibility in the cabinet, first for Lands and Housing (1995-1999), and then for Health (1999-2003). She joined WHO as Assistant Director-General for Family and Community Health (2003-2007) and later served as Vice President for Human Development at the World Bank (2007-2009). She has served on a number of commissions and expert groups and sits on the boards of several international nonprofit organizations working on global health.
Peter Piot, M.D., Ph.D., is the Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS and UN Under Secretary-General. Dr. Piot co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, and led research on HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s health in Africa. He was a professor at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, University of Nairobi, and College de Frances, Paris, and a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, the Royal Academy of Medicine of his native Belgium, and the Academy of Medical Sciences, United Kingdom. He was the President of the International AIDS Society and was knighted as a baron. He has published more than 550 scientific articles and 16 books, including No Time to Lose. He was the recipient of the Calderone Prize, the Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize for Medical Research, the Prince Mahidol Award, the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, and the Robert Koch Gold Medal.
Kumanan Rasanathan, M.P.H., is a public health physician and Senior Health Specialist at UNICEF in New York. He works on district health system strengthening to improve the delivery of maternal and child health services, with a particular focus in South and East Asia, and including links to universal health coverage. Dr. Rasanathan is also the UNICEF focal point for health in the post-2015 development agenda and for social determinants of child health. He has commissioned and overseen a number of pieces of research for UNICEF in health systems strengthening and social determinants, and leads UNICEF’s partnerships with TDR (the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases) and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research.
Kenji Shibuya, M.D., Dr. PH., is Professor and Chair of Global Health Policy at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Medicine and President of the Japan Institute for Global Health. He obtained his M.D. at the University of Tokyo and his doctorate in international health economics at Harvard University. After teaching at Teikyo University in Tokyo, he joined
WHO’s Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy in 2001 and was chief of the Health Statistics and Evidence Unit from 2005 until 2008. He has published widely on mortality, causes of death, burden of disease, risk factors, cost effectiveness, priority setting, health system performance assessment, and health diplomacy. He has been an advisor to both central and local governments. He spearheaded the future strategic directions of the Japanese global health policy agenda after the Hokkaido Toyako G8 Summit in 2008. He led the Lancet Series on Japan, published in 2011 in an effort to jump-start debates on Japanese domestic and global health policy reform. This year he chaired the landmark Advisory Panel on Health Care 2035 for the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. He is currently the Executive Advisor on Global Health for the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
Ronald K. St. John, M.D., M.P.H., has had a 35-year career in public health and infectious disease control in the United States and Canada, and at the World Health Organization, Regional Office for the Americas. With undergraduate, medical, and public health degrees from Yale, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Harvard, his career has included the planning, management, and policy review of international and national infectious disease control programs, quarantine and migration health, travel medicine, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network, travel medicine, and counter-terrorism. As the first Director-General for the Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response in the Public Health Agency of Canada, he was the national manager for Canada’s response to 9/11, and SARS. The Centre serves as the country’s single coordinating point for public health security in Canada.
In the past, he worked and lived in Bolivia and the Philippines. From 1989 to 1992 he was Deputy Director of the National AIDS Program Office in the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Most recently, he was the Ebola Incident Manager at PAHO responsible for assessing and improving member states’ response to the possible importation of a case of Ebola.
Dame Barbara Stocking became the fifth President of Murray Edwards College (New Hall) in July 2013. From May 2001 until February 2013 Dame Stocking was Chief Executive of Oxfam GB. During this time she led major humanitarian responses. In March 2015, Dame Stocking was appointed Chair of the Independent Panel to Assess WHO’s Response in the Ebola outbreak. The final report was published in July 2015. Previously, Dame Stocking was a member of the top management team of the National Health Service, and for 8 years worked as Regional Director for the South East of England, and then as the founding Director of the NHS
Modernisation Agency. She was awarded a CBE for health services in 2000, and a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) for humanitarian services, in 2008.
Keizo Takemi is a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) member of the Japanese House of Councilors. He has also served as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Obuchi Cabinet in 1999, and the Senior Vice Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare in the first Abe cabinet. Within LDP, he serves as the Chairman of the Special Mission Committee on Global Health Strategy of the Policy Research Council. He is a Senior Fellow at the Japan Center for International Exchange. He was involved in various global initiatives, including the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health, Global Health Workforce Alliance, WHO Expert Working Group on R&D Financing, and the International Organizing Committee of the Prince Mahidol Award Conference. Since March 2013, he has served as the Chair of the Parliamentary Caucus on Stop TB Partnership and, since October 2013, as the Chair of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.
Alejandro Thiermann, Ph.D., has been President of the World Organisation for Animal Health’s (OIE’s) international standard setting committee, the Terrestrial Animal Health Code Commission, since 2000. He has been seconded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to the OIE in Paris to devote full time to the work of this Commission as well as to serve as the senior advisor to the Director-General. During 1997 to 1999 he was twice elected Chairman of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Sanitary and Phytosanitary Committee. He was an active member of U.S. delegations to the negotiation of the Uruguay Round of the WTO, the drafting of the new International Plant Protection Convention, also served for 2 years as the U.S. Coordinator for the Codex Alimentarius. Dr. Thiermann joined USDA-APHIS in 1989 as the Deputy Administrator for International Services. In this capacity, he promoted APHIS’ role in trade facilitation. Before joining APHIS, he was the National Program Leader for animal health research under the USDA Agriculture Research Service. A native of Chile, he received his doctorate of veterinary medicine degree from the University of Chile at Santiago, and a Ph.D. degree in medical microbiology and immunology from the School of Medicine at Wayne State University in Michigan.
Oyewale Tomori, D.V.M., Ph.D., F.A.S.T.M.H., is currently the President of the Nigerian Academy of Science. He was pioneer Vice-Chancellor at the Redeemer’s University, Nigeria. He is a recipient of the NNOM, Nigeria’s highest award for academic and intellectual attainment. At the University
of Ibadan, Nigeria, as Professor of Virology, he led research into study of viral infections, and elucidated the properties of Orungo virus, registered with the ICVT. In 1981, he received the U.S. Public Health Service Certificate for contribution to Lassa fever research. At the WHO Africa Region, as Regional Virologist from 1994 to 2004, he set up the African Regional Polio Laboratory Network, which provided laboratory diagnostic support for polio eradication, and became the forerunner of regional diagnostic laboratory networks for other diseases. He has been involved in the investigations of outbreaks of viral hemorrhagic fevers (yellow fever, Ebola virus disease, etc.) infections in many African countries. Tomori serves on several national and international advisory bodies, including the Nigeria Expert Review Committee (ERC) on Poliomyelitis Eradication and Routine Immunization, and as a member of the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Sustainable Global Surveillance of Zoonotic Diseases, the IOM Committee on Identifying and Prioritizing New Preventive Vaccines for Development, the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), and Co-Chairman of the ASADI/USNAS/NASAC Study Team on Country Ownership of Africa’s Development, SAGE Working Group on Ebola.
Paul Wise, M.D., is the Richard E. Behrman Professor of Child Health and Society and Professor of Pediatrics and Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Wise is also a Senior Fellow in the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. He is also Co-director of the March of Dimes Center for Prematurity Research at Stanford University.
Dr. Wise received his A.B. degree summa cum laude in Latin American studies, his M.D. degree from Cornell University, and a master of public health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health and did his pediatric training at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. His former positions include Director of Emergency and Primary Care Services at Boston Children’s Hospital, Director of the Harvard Institute for Reproductive and Child Health, and Vice-Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He served as Special Assistant to the U.S. Surgeon General, Chair of the Steering Committee of the National Institutes of Health Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research, and currently is a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Wise’s research focuses on health inequalities, child health policy, and global child health. He leads a multidisciplinary initiative, Children in Crisis, which is directed at integrating expertise in political science, security, and health services in areas of civil conflict and unstable governance.
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