Speakers A-M

Symposium speakers

Symposium chairs and speakers (A-M)

Get to know the project coordinators and panellists of the main plenary session here

Get to know the symposium speakers N-Z here

Dr Karim Abu-OmarSpeaker of session 6 and 8

Dr Karim Abu-Omar
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany

Karim Abu-Omar is a lecturer at the Department of Sports Science and Sport at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany. He is Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Physical Activity and Public Health at FAU. His primary research focus is on the interrelations between physical activity promotion and planetary health. Other research interests include health promotion policy development and implementation, scaling of public health interventions, and physical activity surveillance.

Anaely Aguiar RodriguezSpeaker of session 4

Anaely Aguiar Rodriguez
University of Bergen, Norway

Anaely Aguiar is a PhD student in System Dynamics at the University of Bergen. Her research interests are primarily driven by understanding how to tackle complex societal challenges, specially, public health problems affecting youth. Her research project applies participatory methods, including Group Model Building, as well as quantitative simulation methods to studying the underlying feedback mechanisms responsible for increasing adolescent overweight and obesity trends and investigate how these mechanisms can be mitigated.

Professor Wolfgang AhrensPEN Coordinator, Speaker of session 8

Professor Dr Wolfgang Ahrens
Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS, Germany

Professor Wolfgang Ahrens is Deputy Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology - BIPS in Bremen, Germany, and Head of the Department of Epidemiological Methods and Etiological Research. A key focus of his research addresses the causes of non-communicable diseases as well as their primary prevention and the scientific evaluation of intervention measures. Further research interests lie in the use of secondary data for epidemiological research. As network leader he coordinates the research of the JPI-HDHL Policy Evaluation Network (PEN) 'Public policies addressing health-related behaviours in Europe' (www.jpi-pen.eu) and the JPI-HDHL project 'Obesity prevention tailored to critical transition periods in the early life-course' (GrowH!; www.growh.eu). He has published more than 450 international peer-reviewed papers and authored/edited twelve books, amongst them the Handbook of Epidemiology, a major reference work.

Dr Olivier AllaisSpeaker of session 7

Dr Olivier Allais
INRAE

Olivier Allais is an economist, senior researcher at INRAE. From 2011, he is the director of the Research Unit Aliss, and belongs to the scientific board of the French food products observatory OQALI. He has been involved in many European and national projects dealing with food policy evaluations fiscal, food labelling, and product reformulation. His past and ongoing projects allow him to work with sociologist, epidemiologists, nutritionist, and data science researchers. He is the WPL of WP4 on evaluation of fiscal and food labelling policies in STOP.

Albert AszalosSpeaker of session 9

Albert Aszalos
Semmelweis University

Albert Aszalos has been working for the Health Services Management Training Centre of Semmelweis Medical University in Budapest since 2012. He is the head of communications for the Best-ReMaP project and has been in the same role for other EU projects including the Chrodis Plus Joint Action on chronic diseases (chrodis.eu), the Health Workforce Planning Joint Action (healthworkforce.eu) and the AMR DetecTool project (amrdetect.eu). He was also the coordinator of an expert group for a WHO global health workforce planning project - the NHWA. Degrees: MA in Economics, MPhil in International Law, Executive MBA and MSc in Data Science.

Dr Evelyne BaillergeauPanelist of session 2

Dr Evelyne Baillergeau
University of Amsterdam

Evelyne Baillergeau serves as assistant lead of CO-CREATE’s Work Package 5, aimed at recruiting and engaging 15 “Youth Alliances for Overweight Prevention Policies” across Europe. She is a senior researcher at the University of Amsterdam (Department of Sociology). Her research is about the ways in which young individuals engage with the future through their commitments in their daily lives and the role of the social and cultural context in their attitudes toward the future. She is co-coordinator of the Research Network Youth and Generation at the European Sociological Association.

Anna BanikSpeaker of session 10

Anna Banik
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

PhD, assistant professor at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, specializing in research on psychosocial determinants of the health behaviour change process. She is a postdoctoral researcher and co-investigator in national and European Commission funded research projects considering healthy lifestyle outcomes.

Dr Alijadallah BelabessSpeaker of session 9 and 13

Dr Alijadallah Belabess
Imperial College London

Alijadallah Belabess joined the Imperial College Business School in September 2018 working on the Science & Technology in Childhood Obesity Policy (STOP) project. His current research focuses on using mathematical models to produce estimates of the future burden of childhood obesity in the EU, its impact on health care expenditure, delivery, population well-being, health, and socio-economic inequalities, as well as estimating changes in these impacts through exploring various health and non-health-related policy options.

Judith BenedicsSpeaker of session 14

Judith Benedics
BMASGK, Austria

Judith Benedics is a nutritionist with work experience in research, care, community catering and public governance. She works for the Austrian Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection since 2015 as a senior technical officer in nutrition. Her main research interests are public health nutrition, the food system, nutrition throughout the life circle and prevention of NCDs.

Betina Bergmann MadsenSpeaker of session 14

Betina Bergmann Madsen
CPH-MUN, Denmark

Betina Bergmann Madsen is Procurement Manager at the Municipality of Copenhagen (2009-present), Chair of the National Food Procurement Network (2017-present), Advisor to the EU, WHO and FAO (2020-2021) and UNFSS Champion (2021-present). Since 2001, Copenhagen has had a target of serving 90% organic food in all public meals, and most kitchens have met or exceeded this target. The tenders also include the SDGs and other policy goals such as a stable supply of high quality seasonal produce, diversity in fruit, vegetables and fish as well as actively enforcing tenders to include circular economy and SMEs. The latest tool to achieve a more sustainable food system is a climate assessment tool and the use of SDGs as a contracting tool.

Dr Roxane BerjaouiPanellist at the main plenary session

Dr Roxane Berjaoui
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.

Margarida BicaSpeaker of session 11

Margarida Bica
Portuguese Directorate-General of Health

Margarida Bica is a Public Health Nutritionist, with experience in governmental, non-profit, and international organisations. She has been dedicated mainly to childhood obesity and digital marketing, especially on monitoring and reducing children's exposure to unhealthy products. She works at the Portuguese National Program for the Promotion of Healthy Eating of the Directorate-General of Health, integrating the leading team of the Best-ReMaP Joint Action Work Package on best practices to reduce unhealthy food marketing to children and adolescents.

Dr Marie BraggSpeaker of session 11

Dr Marie Bragg
New York University

Marie Bragg's research examines how unhealthy food advertising -especially on social media- affects the way children and adolescents make food choices. Her lab’s work focuses primarily on youth of colour because food and beverage companies disproportionately target them in advertisements featuring the least healthy products. Their recent work has documented the extent to which Kid Influencers promote unhealthy food and beverages on YouTube.

Dr Francesco BrancaMain plenary panellist and Speaker at the closing plenary session

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.

Dr Hannah BrinsdenChair of session 2 and Speaker at the closing plenary session

Dr Hannah Brinsden
World Obesity, UK

Hannah Brinsden is Director of Policy at the World Obesity Federation where she leads the organisations policy and advocacy work. Hannah has over 10 years experience working in national and international NGOs, campaigning for healthier environments to improve global health. She is a Registered Public Health Nutritionist, has a degree in Nutrition and Food Science from Reading University, a PhD in Food Policy from City, University of London and was a Fellow of the Lancet Commission on the Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition and Climate Change. Hannah’s key interests include childhood obesity, nutrition and commercial determinants.

Katarzyna BrukałoChair of session 14

Katarzyna Brukało
SUM, Poland

Katarzyna Brukało is a clinical nutritionist and public health specialist, MBA in health care, expert of the European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians within the European Specialist Dietetic Network (ESDN) for Older Adults. She is a researcher of numerous national and international projects of the World Health Organization and the European Commission, incl. JA Nutrition and Physical Activity, JA Health Equity Europe, Essential Public Health Operations, Policy Evaluation Network, Health Needs Maps.
The main research interests: nutrition policy, local health policy, malnutrition, nutrition of the elderly and in neurodegenerative diseases.

Dejan BojanicSpeaker of session 2

Dejan Bojanic
Save the Children

Dejan Bojanic is the Chief Executive Officer at Save the Children’s youth organisation in Sweden. Forbes listed him on their annual 30 under 30 list for “championing European’s rights and their political movements”, for his work in children’s rights protection, youth development and public governance. He has been in the leadership of national, European and global movements bringing together children and youth organisations to advocate for attainment of human rights for children and young people. Dejan serves on the Scientific and Advisory Board for CO-CREATE as an advisor on children and youth participation in designing policies and action to prevent obesity in adolescents.

Zuzanna BurzynskaSpeaker of session 2

Zuzanna Burzynska
CO-CREATE Youth Declaration Task Force

Zuzanna Burzyńska is an 18-year-old student from Poland who graduated from high school this April. Since 2020 she has been taking part in the CO-CREATE Youth Declaration Task Force project as the only Polish representative in the group consisting of youth advocates from four European countries. The main objective of the mentioned program was to create a document, which would be targeted at politicians and other stakeholders and would contain several demands/ideas concerning our perspective on the obesity problem and what ought to be done to eliminate or minimize it. We adopted the declaration in November 2020 and have been promoting it ever since during online and in-person conferences.

Nicole den BraverSpeaker of session 5

Nicole den Braver
Amsterdam UMC, Netherlands

Nicole den Braver is a postdoctoral researchers at the department of Epidemiology & Data Science of the Amsterdam UMC. The main focus of her research is to study pathways between aspects of built environment, lifestyle behaviors and non-communicable diseases. Her thesis was on built environmental characteristics related to physical activity and dietary behaviors, and the incidence and progression of type 2 diabetes. In the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN), Nicole is involved in the development of a physical activity environment policy index.

Michele CecchiniSpeaker of session 9

Michele Cecchini
OECD

Michele Cecchini is responsible for work on Public Health at the OECD where he focuses on priority setting and programme evaluation of policies influencing population health. He is the author and editor of a large number of publications on economic aspects of public health, including the OECD publication "The Heavy Burden of Obesity - The Economics of Prevention". He holds a position of adjunct professor in applied health economics at the University of Siena and served as a temporary advisor to government and intergovernmental agencies such as the WHO, IARC, EC and the World Bank. Michele is a medical doctor specialized in public health and holds a Master degree from the London School of Economics and PhD from Imperial College London.

Ekaterina Chikova-IscenerSpeaker of session 14

Ekaterina Chikova-Iscener
National Center for Public Health and Analysis (NCPHA)

Ekaterina Chikova-Iscener is involved in the work packages of Best-ReMap including food procurement in public institutions and food monitoring and reformulation.

Caroline CostongsChair of the panel discussion at the main plenary

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.

Wim DebeuckelaereSpeaker of session 14

Wim Debeuckelaere
DG SANTE

Wim Debeuckelaere graduated in Biology and Agricultural Science in 1986, at the University of Ghent, Belgium. For 12 Years, he worked for the Belgian consumer organisation, Test-Achats, in charge of testing quality and safety of food. In 2002, joined the European Commission. Until 2017, coordinated the activities related to evaluation and authorisation of food additives, food enzymes and flavourings in DG SANTE. Coordinated the implementation of the Nitrates Directive, protecting the waters against pollution with nitrates from agriculture in DG ENV. Since October 2021, he re-joined the DG SANTE Farm to Fork unit for which he collaborates on the sustainable food systems framework.

Sanne DjojosoepartoSpeaker of session 7

Sanne Djojosoeparto
Univesity of Utrecht, Netherlands

Sanne Djojosoeparto is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the evaluation of governmental policies influencing food environments. With her research, she aims to gain insight into how governmental policies could be improved to create healthy food environments. In addition, she aims to understand the differential impact of food environment policies on different socioeconomic groups.

Dr Sarah ForbergerSpeaker of session 10

Dr Sarah Forberger
Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS, Germany

Sarah Forberger is a senior researcher in the Department of Prevention and Evaluation. Her main research interests are in the field of evidence-based Public Health and Public Policy. Her focus is on implementation research with particular attention to the interaction between setting/system and intervention and the role of contextual factors, as well as the application of findings from behavioural science (nudging) for public health and public policy making in the field of physical activity promotion and nutrition.

Artur FurtadoPanellist at main plenary session

Artur Furtado
European Comission, DG Sante, Luxemburg

Dr Mojca GabrijelčičJA Best-ReMaP Coordinator, Chair of session 14, co-chair of session 11, Speaker at session 9

Dr Mojca Gabrijelčič
Slovenian National Institut of Public Health (NIJZ)

Mojca Gabrijelčič Blenkuš is a medical doctor and a specialist in public health. She also has a PhD in social sciences. Her fields of interest and expertise are nutrition, physical activity, and in last few years, aging and frailty. She was head of the Health Promotion centre at the NIPH Slovenia from 2003 to 2010 and head of the Health Research and Health Development Centre from 2020 to 2021. Today, she is mostly involved in policy and programme development, and in research projects. Her main academic interest is in public policies; she holds assistant professorship at the Medical Faculty of University of Ljubljana where she teaches health promotion theory and health in all policies. 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.

Dr Peter GeliusSpeaker of session 5 and at the main plenary

Dr Peter Gelius
Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany

Peter Gelius is a research associate at the Department of Sport Science and Sport at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). He also is a co-director of the department’s WHO Collaboration Centre for Physical Activity and Public Health. His main research interests include physical activity policy, knowledge co-production in health promotion, and health promotion theory. He has been involved in several projects related to policy monitoring and participatory physical activity promotion, including the transdisciplinary Capital4Health consortium. He regularly consults the World Health Organization on issues of physical activity policy.

Pedro GoncalvesPanelist of session 2

Pedro Goncalves
CO-CREATE Youth Task Force

Pedro is a Portuguese design student and Scout inspired to create a better world. He is a member of the CO-CREATE youth alliance in Portugal; and a core member of the CO-CREATE Youth Task-Force. His engagement in the youth alliances involved developing policy ideas to halt the rising childhood obesity epidemic in Europe and refining them through dialogue forums. The Taskforce launched a Youth Declaration in 2020 with four demands to push policymakers and stakeholders in Europe to act on childhood obesity now. Since the adoption of the declaration, Pedro with members of the Youth Task Force has promoted the declaration at events including the City Food Symposium, EAT@Home webinar, and the CO-CREATE Youth Virtual Seminar.

Dr Maria Joao GregorioSpeaker of session 11

Dr Maria Joao Gregorio
Portuguese Directorate-General of Health

Maria João Gregório is currently the Director of the Portuguese National Programme for the Promotion of Healthy Eating of the Directorate-General of Health. She is also an Assistant Professor on Food and Nutrition Policy at Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences of the University of Porto. She is a registered public health nutritionist with a PhD in Food Consumption Sciences and Nutrition. 

Dr Janas HarringtonChair and Speaker of session 1 and 3, and of the main plenary session

Dr Janas Harrington
University College Cork (CHDR), Cork, Ireland

Janas Harrington is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition and programme Director of the BSc Public Health Sciences, University College Cork. She leads the Food Policy Research team in the Centre for Health and Diet Research, School of Public Health, UCC. My research is focussed on food policy and dietary pattern analysis. More specfically, she studies the upstream determinants of population diets and the association between diet patterns and chronic disease, including obesity.  Dr Harrington currently focuses on the impact of Government food policies on the healthiness of food environments and identification of best practice for developing sustainable food-based dietary guidelines. She has successfully led national and European research projects and is currently a work package leader for a JPI-HDHL funded 'Policy Evaluation Network (PEN)' evaluating the effectiveness of existing policies for lifestyle interventions.

Dr Antje HebestreitChair and Speaker of session 6 and 8

Dr Antje Hebestreit
Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS, Germany

Antje Hebestreit is head of the Unit Lifestyle-Related Disorders at the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology – BIPS. In the JPI-HDHL funded project DEDIPAC, she developed a roadmap towards a harmonized health surveillance in Europe; Since 2018 she chairs work package 2 on monitoring and surveillance of the JPI-HDHL project 'Policy Evaluation Network (PEN)' aiming at the establishment of such a harmonized surveillance system. As nutritional epidemiologist, her work has focused on determinants and health consequences of dietary behaviour, dietary intake, physical activity and sedentary behaviour in youth, with a strong interest in underlying mechanisms and innovations in risk factor research.

Arnfinn HelleveSpeaker of session 2

Arnfinn Helleve
Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH)

Arnfinn Helleve is a sociologist, with work experiences from the Norwegian Directorate of Public Health and is currently working as the Head of the Centre for Evaluation of Public Health Measures at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. His research interest is evaluation of public health measures. He leads a work package In CO-CREATE.

Hanna Kristina JakobsenPanelist of session 2

Hanna Kristina Jakobsen
CO-CREATE Youth TaskForce

Hanna Kristina Jakobsen has been a part of the CO-CREATE Youth Task Force since June 2020 and active in youth NGOs (Press - Save the Children Youth, Changemaker, Nature and Youth and Greenpeace) since 2016. Through these organisations she has participated in several national meetings, seminars, campaigns and projects with themes varying from youth engagement, health, environment and children’s rights.

Professor Sonja KahlmeierChair of opening plenary session

Professor Sonja Kahlmeier
Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences (FFHS)

Sonja Kahlmeier has been at the FFHS since November 2018, where she heads the Health Department. Her focus is on physical activity and health, where she deals with policies and strategies for promoting physical activity, with transport-related and economic approaches. She worked at the Institute for Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention (EBPI, formerly ISPM) at the University of Zurich, and at the Division for Noncommunicable Diseases and Environment at the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization, where she was responsible for the same topics. For over 10 years, she coordinated the European network for the promotion of health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA Europe), whose development she led at the WHO from 2005 onwards. She has also supported the development of the European Strategy for Physical Activity and Health.

Dr Carlijn KamphuisCo-Chair of session 7

Dr Carlijn Kamphuis
Univesity of Utrecht, Netherlands

Carlijn Kamphuis is a health scientist by training and working as an Associate Professor of Public Health at the Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. With her research, she aims to increase our understanding of how physical, socio-cultural and policy-environmental factors contribute to socioeconomic inequalities in health and health-behaviours (e.g. food consumption, physical activity). She leads the work package on policy in practice – selected case studies in PEN.

Dr Liam KellySpeaker of session 5

Dr Liam Kelly
University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

Liam Kelly is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Limerick in the area of Physical Activity (PA) and Health Policy; Policy Evaluation Network (PEN). He is project manager for WP1 Task 1.2. tasked with leading on the development of a PA Policy Environment Index (PA-EPI) – a monitoring framework to assess government policies and actions for creating a healthy PA environment and is current acting chair of the PEN Early Careers Network. Dr Kelly graduated from the National Centre for Men’s Health at IT Carlow, Ireland. The focus of his PhD was an evaluation of a community-based PA programme targeted at previously inactive men; ‘Men on the Move’. Dr Kelly previously spent 13 years working in Architecture. His research interests include policy evaluation, PA promotion and men’s health.

Professor Knut-Inge KleppCO-CREATE Coordinator, Speaker of session 2

Professor Knut-Inge Klepp
Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH)

Knut-Inge Klepp is Executive Director for Mental and Physical Health at the NIPH and professor at the Department of Nutrition, University of Oslo. Klepp was Director General for Public Health at the Norwegian Directorate of Health from 2006 to 2015. He has published extensively in the field of adolescent health promotion and nutrition, and he has coordinated and served as investigator on several EU funded research projects, including the CO-CREATE project. Professor Klepp has previously chaired the Norwegian National Council on Nutrition and Physical Activity, he is former president of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, and he is currently a member of the WHOs Nutrition Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Policy Actions.

Jeroen LakerveldSpeaker at the main plenary

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 Michael LaxyCo-Chair of session 13

Professor Michael Laxy
Helmholtz Munich – Institute of Health Economics

Michael Laxy is Assistant Professor of Public Health and Prevention at the Technical University of Munich, Group Leader the Institute of Health Economics and Health Care Management at Helmholtz Munich and Adjunct Professor of Global Health at Emory University – Rollins School of Public Health. Professor Laxy studies disease prevention in the context of public health and health care systems. He uses methods from the fields of economics and epidemiology to generate evidence on determinants and consequences of non-communicable diseases and on the health, economic and equity impact of interventions and policies to prevent and treat these conditions. He co-leads the work package on estimation and simulation of policy impact in PEN.

Tale LejonPanelist of session 2

Tale Lejon
CO-CREATE Youth TaskForce

Member of the CO-CREATE Youth Task Force and National Board Member of Press - Save The Children Youth Norway. Especially interested in social media marketing, as well as the connection between physical activity and mental and physical health. Access to nutrition is also an important matter, as someone who has grown up with a large amount of food allergies and problems with both mental and physical health.

Professor Nanna LienChair of session 4

Professor Nanna Lien
University of Oslo, Norway

Nanna Lien of the Department of Nutrition at the University of Oslo, Norway has more than 15 years of experience in school-based intervention research in nutrition and obesity prevention. The focus of her research has developed from effectiveness studies testing interventions in randomized controlled trials to the challenges of achieving population impact of these interventions considering the complex systems in which they will be implemented. Understanding and preventing social inequalities in dietary behaviours and obesity has been a subtheme of her research throughout. She is project member in CO-CREATE and PEN.

Dr Jaana LindströmSpeaker of Session 9

Dr Jaana Lindström
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland

MSc in nutrition, PhD in public health. Research Managerand team leaderin the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, with expertise in risk identification and prevention of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention. Interested in interventions in individual, environmental, health care, and policy levels. Leader of the WP3 (evaluation) in Best-ReMaP

Karolina LobczowskaSpeaker of session 10

Karolina Lobczowska
SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland

PhD Karolina Lobczowska is assistant professor at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities (Poland), specializing in research on psychosocial determinants of the health behaviour change process. She is a postdoctoral researcher and co-investigator in national and European Commission funded research projects considering healthy lifestyle outcomes. She is project member in PEN.

Barbara LončarekSpeaker of session 14

Barbara Lončarek
CCIS

Barbara Lončarek studied nutrition at Biotechnical Faculty in Ljubljana. After that, she started working at Chamber of Agricultural and Food Enterprises, that is part of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia. Her field of work is mainly public procurement of food and food safety. She is working on Slovenian and European projects, regarding food fraud (and its prevention), food waste, public procurement of food. Her main task is being publisher of Catalogue for public procurement of food, which means communicating with food producers, to insert correct information about their food products and educating public institutions how to correctly use application, when preparing public tender of food.

Professor Mario MazzocchiSpeaker of session 13

Professor Mario Mazzocchi
University of Bologna

Mario Mazzocchi is professor in Economic Statistics at the University of Bologna, and has been a lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at the University of Reading. He is co-editor in chief of the journal Food Policy, and a member of the Social Research Methods working group of EFSA. He has collaborated as an expert on policy evaluation with FAO and the European Commission. He has led research teams in several EC-funded projects and international initiatives, including the national co-ordination of the Policy Evaluation Network (PEN)' within the JPI-HDHL, leading also the work package on estimation and simulation of policy impact. He has published two books, with Oxford University Press (Fat Economics) and Sage (Statistics for Marketing and Consumer Research) and more than 60 Scopus-indexed articles.

Dr Sven MessingSpeaker of session 5

Dr Sven Messing
Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Germany

Sven Messing is a research associate at the Department of Sport Science and Sport at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). He also is a researcher at the department's WHO Collaboration Centre for Physical Activity and Public Health. With a background in political science, his research focuses on policies and interventions to promote physical activity. He has been involved in the development of Germany's National Recommendations for Physical Activity and Physical Activity Promotion and other national and international projects.

Professor Daniele MoroSpeaker of session 7

Professor Daniele Moro
University of Piacenza

Daniele Moro is Full Professor in the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at Università Cattolica, Piacenza. His main research interests are price analysis and the evaluation of policy interventions in agricultural and food markets, and applied quantitative methods.

Dr Magdalena Muc da EncarnaçãoSpeaker of session 11

Dr Magdalena Muc da Encarnação
The Open University UK

Magdalena Muc da Encarnação is a researcher working in the field of public health and food policy. Her main research the interest is the impact of marketing of unhealthy food on children, especially in digital media, monitoring and restrictions of such marketing and its privacy implications. Her previous work included systematic review of evidence for Public Health England, Wellcome funded qualitative study of children’s attitudes towards online marketing, WHO commissioned work on sugar tax and salt content in bread in Portugal. Currently she is working on the development of the EU-wide protocol to monitor unhealthy food marketing to children.

Laurent MullerSpeaker of session 13

Laurent Muller
Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRAE)

Laurent Muller is a research director at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) at the Applied Economics Laboratory of Grenoble (GAEL). His general research theme is the economic analysis of individual consumer food behaviors using experimental economics methods. The first theme concerns the economic determinants of final food consumption behaviors and the inflection of these behaviors by public incentive policies. The second theme concerns the development of new experimental methodologies; the goal is to improve and make the method more reliable in order to obtain reproducible and predictive results in the laboratory. He is a project member in STOP and PEN.

Dr Annabel Müller-StierlinSpeaker of session 10

Dr Annabel Müller-Stierlin
Ulm University, Germany

Annabel Müller-Stierlin is a nutrition scientist and biostatistician working as postdoctoral researcher at Ulm University at the Department of Psychiatry II and Insitute for Epidemiology and Medical Biometry,. Her research focuses, among other things, on somatic care for people with mental illnesses by means of integrated care approaches that take greater account of lifestyle-related risk factors, such as dietary habits. The research projects cover a very broad spectrum of methods, mainly in the framework of health care services research and implementation science. All projects are characterized by recovery-oriented, interdisciplinary consortia who aim to take into account various perspectives from service users, relatives and professionals. She has joined Professor Steinacker’s team in the working package on .policy implementation evaluation in PEN, primarily due to her expertise with stakeholder consultation studies.

Dr Celine MurrinChair and Speaker of session 6 and 8

Dr Celine Murrin
University College Dublin, Ireland

Celine Murrin is a lecturer in Public Health Nutrition in University College Dublin and Deputy Director of the National Nutrition Surveillance Centre. She is a project partner on the JPI-HDL 'Policy Evaluation Network (PEN)' and is Co-Chair of work package 2 on monitoring and surveillance. Her research to date has focused on the area of child obesity; she is a lead investigator for the 'Irish Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative'. Her research interests are broadly within the socio-ecological determinants of dietary behaviours in early life with a particular interest in youth perceptions of the food environment.

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