Speakers in Workshops 2015

John-Arne Røttingen is the Director of the Division of Infectious Disease Control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health; Professor of Health Policy at the Department of Health Management and Health Economics, Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo; and Adjunct Professor at the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health.

He is also Associate Fellow at the Centre on Global Health Security, Chatham House; Chair of the Board of the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research; member of the Scientific Oversight Group of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle; and member of the International Advisory Committee for the Global Burden of Disease study. Professor Røttingen received his MD and PhD from the University of Oslo. He also holds an MSc from Oxford University and an MPA from Harvard University.

Kevin Outterson, J.D., LL.M., is Professor and N. Neal Pike Scholar in Health and Disability Law at Boston University, where he teaches health law and corporate law while also co-directing the Health Law Program.

His research focuses on the organization and finance of the health sector. Areas of specialization include global pharmaceutical markets, particularly antibiotics and other antimicrobials that can degrade in usefulness over time through resistance. He leads an interdisciplinary project on the legal ecology of antimicrobial resistance. He is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and a founding member of the Antimicrobial Resistance Working Group at the CDC. He was a senior consultant on the Eastern Research Group study on antibiotic markets for the FDA/HHS.

Anja Leetz is Executive Director of Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) Europe, a leading advocate of environmental health and justice that works to make the health sector ecologically sustainable across the globe.

Before joining HCWH, Mrs Leetz worked for more than ten years with organisations such as Friends of the Earth and the European Environmental Bureau in the United Kingdom and Belgium. She holds a teaching qualification, a BA in Photography and has recently obtained the qualification of Foundation Manager at the European Business School in Germany.

Mrs Leetz focuses on growing HCWH’s European network to better implement sustainable healthcare systems across Europe. As an avid networker and communicator, she works with the WHO, UNDP and partners at local, national, European and global levels on procurement, green healthcare, mercury elimination and other relevant issues.

Joakim Larsson is a Professor in Environmental Pharmacology at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He received his PhD in animal physiology in 2000 in Gothenburg, and after two years of guest research at marine labs in Canada and USA, he decided to combine his interest for the environment with medicine. He became associate professor in human physiology in 2007. He currently leads a research group of about 15 people at the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Gothenburg. The research focus of his group mainly relates to aspects on antibiotic resistance and pharmaceuticals in the environment, often including genomic or metagenomic approaches.

His most cited papers include the identification of ethinylestradiol as an important contributor to the feminization of wild fish, and a series of studies showing that manufacturing discharges is the cause for the most severe cases of pharmaceutical pollution observed in the environment. Current projects include research on metals and antibacterial biocides in the promotion of antibiotic resistance, exploration of the environmental resistome for novel carbapenemases, evaluation of advanced effluent treatment technologies etc. In 2012, Professor Larsson received the Erik K Fernström´s prize for young researchers

Prof.dr. Ana Maria de Roda Husman is a virologist at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Risk Assessment of Pathogens in Water and Food, and Head of the Environment Department at the Laboratory for Zoonoses and Environmental Microbiology, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Centre for Infectious Disease Control, Bilthoven, the Netherlands.

She has over 20 years of experience as a principal investigator in molecular virology and water microbiology and currently advises policy makers at the Dutch government, the European committee and, among others, the WHO, ECDC and EFSA on the possible public health risks of environmentally transmitted infectious diseases caused by exposure to human pathogens in water, soil and air, as well as on possible intervention measures.

Dr Sarala Balachandran is currently working with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as Chief scientist and Project Director, Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD). OSDD is involved in the area of drug discovery and development of neglected diseases to provide ‘Affordable healthcare to all’. Spearheading the PA-824 regimen into Phase IIb clinical trials for MDR TB in India.

She has extensive, in-depth and comprehensive expertise obtained on all aspects of the drug discovery in academic settings and pharmaceutical industry.

James Anderson, Head of Corporate Government Affairs at GSK since January 2015, leads engagement with the UK Government to deliver the group’s strategic corporate agenda, which spans pharmaceuticals, vaccines, consumer, R&D and manufacturing businesses.

Previously, as Partnerships Director, Mr Anderson developed and led multiple partnerships with stakeholders to improve the way GSK develops and commercialises its products. Working collaboratively, he addressed significant health policy issues, often by conducting pilots to drive and demonstrate progress. For example, he led GSK’s engagement with EU payers, politicians and HTA agencies, which delivered the first multi-country parallel scientific advice process and helped shape the evolving European market access system.

Dr. Peter Beyer, a trained lawyer, is a Senior Advisor with the World Health Organization (WHO) where he is responsible for all issues related to public health, trade and intellectual property. He provides legal and policy advice to senior management, other WHO departments and offices, as well as WHO Member States. Dr Beyer was instrumental in setting up a sustainable cooperation on health and intellectual property-related issues among the WHO and the World Intellectual Property and World Trade Organizations.

Previously, Dr Beyer worked with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property. He negotiated bilateral free trade, headed negotiations at the WHO and WIPO, and was responsible for the bilateral dialogue between Switzerland and China on intellectual property.

Francis Moussy joined the World Health Organization in 2009. He is currently leading projects to facilitate the development, access and use of medical devices with a focus on diagnostics that are suitable for Low-and-Middle Income Countries (LMICs). He is also currently the focal point for new Ebola diagnostics.

Prior to joining the WHO, Dr Moussy worked as Professor and Deputy Director at the Brunel Institute for Bioengineering at Brunel University (West London), UK, where he worked on biosensors.

From 2002 to 2007, he held a position as a tenured Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa. His work experience also includes four years in Canada after completing his Doctorate in Biomedical Engineering at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France.

Dr Catharina Boehme leads FIND, an international non-profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, that enables the development and delivery of much-needed diagnostic tests for diseases of poverty, including tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis C, HIV, sleeping sickness and other neglected tropical diseases.

She holds a Doctor of Medicine degree in Internal Medicine from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, as well as diplomas in Public Health and Management and Leadership. Prior to joining FIND in 2005, where she focused on clinical trials and strengthening laboratory practices, Dr Boehme worked as programme coordinator for the Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases in Munich. She has also established a TB research unit at the Mbeya Medical Research Program in Tanzania.

Henning Steinfeld is a leading agricultural economist and sustainability expert with specialized expertise in livestock policies, climate change and agricultural development.

Henning obtained an M.Sc and PhD in agricultural economics from the Technical University of Berlin. He was a visiting scholar at Stanford University in 2005 and 2010 (Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Institute for Foreign Studies) and was awarded an Honorary doctorate in veterinary medicine from Uppsala Agricultural University in 2012.

Dick JJ Heederik, who holds a PhD in Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology, is currently Head of the Division of Environmental Epidemiology at the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, where he was appointed Professor of Occupational Health Risk Analysis in 2003.

Professor Heederik’s research has largely been focused on respiratory health effects in relation to exposure to bioaerosols, including allergens, endotoxins and glucans, as well as chemical agents (isocyanates, platinum salts, persistent chemicals). The development of antimicrobial resistance is a recent and important area of research.