Symposium coordinators and panellists of the main plenary session
Get to know the symposium speakers here:
Speakers A-M
Speakers N-Z
Project coordinators
Professor Dr Wolfgang Ahrens
Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS, Germany
Dr Mojca Gabrijelčič
Slovenian National Institut of Public Health (NIJZ)
She has been the WHO national counterpart for nutrition since 2000. She was a member of the drafting group of the WHO Obesity Charter in 2006, of the drafting groups for the preparation of the ‘WHO Steps to Health – A European Framework to promote Physical Activity for Health 2007’ document and of the drafting groups for the second and third FNAP for WHO European region. She has been actively involved in the work of the WHO action network on reducing marketing pressure to children since 2008. At EU level, she participated in the work of HLG on nutrition and physical activity and was nominated as a national representative in the Steering group for the Evaluation of the EU Platform on Nutrition, Physical activity and Obesity in 2009/10, and as a member of the Steering Group for the Evaluation of the EU White paper on nutrition 2007/13. She has coordinated the drafting processes for the first and the second Slovene nutrition and physical activity policy and background drafting process for the Longevity society strategy for Slovenia.
She’s the President of the EuroHealthNet Executive Board since 2018 and the President of the Slovene Public Health Expert Council since 2017.
Jeroen Lakerveld
Amsterdam UMC, Netherlands
Jeroen Lakerveld is epidemiologist and public health researcher and acts as vice-coordinator of PEN. He leads a small but ambitious research group environmental determinants of lifestyle behaviours and chronic disease risk in adults: 'the Upstream Team'. In national and European projects his focus is mostly on environmental determinants of lifestyle behaviours and chronic disease risk, in particular how they can be measured, how they interact and how they can be changed.
Professor Knut-Inge Klepp
Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH)
Professor Franco Sassi
Imperial College London
Professor Catherine Woods
Physical Activity for Health Research Cluster, Health Research Institute, Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Faculty of Education and Health Sciences, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Prof. Woods is the Deputy Coordinator of the PEN project, and chair of WP1 Task 1.2 tasked with leading on the development of a Physical Activity Policy Environment Index (PA EPI) – a monitoring framework to assess government policies and actions for creating a healthy PA environment.
Main plenary panelists
Department of European and International Affairs, Directorate General for Health at the Ministry of Solidarity and Health France
Roxane Berjaoui works at the Department of European and International Affairs as a International expert advisor, near by the General Director of Health at the MoH since march 2019. She is a public health medical doctor and began her career in sport medicine dealing with prevention programs. She is involved in worldwide public health programs in relationship with International Organizations (WHO, OECD, AIDS), in a network upon nutritional labelling where France is co-chair with Australia and Chili, also in national and european (HEPA) collaboration upon physical acticity and in the follow-up of NCD’s at a national level and in relationship with WHO Euro and WHO HQ as well as the follow-up of communicable diseases and environmental health at International level.
Dr Francesco Branca
World Health Organization
Francesco Branca is the Director of the Department of Nutrition and Food safety in the World Health Organization, Geneva (since 2020). From 2008 to 2019, he was the Director of the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development. During this period, WHO has developed a WHO Nutrition strategy, established a new nutrition guideline development process and has developed a Comprehensive Implementation Plan on Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition with six global targets. He has been leading the preparation of the 2nd International Conference on Nutrition and the Secretariat of the Decade of Action on Nutrition. Dr Branca graduated in Medicine and Surgery specializing in Diabetology and Metabolic Diseases at Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and obtained a Msc and a PhD in Nutrition at Aberdeen University.
Caroline Costongs
EuroHealthNet
Caroline Costongs is Director of EuroHealthNet and expert in public health and health promotion. Caroline leads a multi-disciplinary team working on European and (sub)national policy, advocacy, research and capacity building addressing health inequalities. Caroline is active in various EU and WHO fora, as well as in Advisory Boards such as for APHEA (Public Health Education Accreditation Agency) and various EU projects and is a member of the ICC – International Council for the European Public Health Conference.
Caroline has a strong international background with 25+ years of public health, health equity and health promotion experience. In 1992 she started her career as a researcher at the National Capacity Building Institute (INICE) of the Honduras Ministry of Education. She subsequently worked for the Health Institute of the Liverpool John Moores University and the Netherlands Olympic Committee and Sports Confederation (NOC*NSF) linking health and physical activity. In 2000, she joined the European Network of Health Promoting Agencies (ENHPA), where she helped establish EuroHealthNet as a not-for-profit association with legal statutes in Belgium. Caroline graduated from the University of Maastricht with a MSc in Public Health.
European Comission, DG Sante, Luxemburg
Ministerial Advisor at Ministry of Social Affairs and Health Finland, and University of Helsinki