Speakers

Ali Akbari Sari

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Professor of Health Policy School of Public Health and head of National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

Bagher Amirheidari

Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Tania Azadi

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Tania holds a PhD degree in Health Information Management from School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences. She has worked on developing a conceptual model for child injury surveillance system for Iran for her PhD research which was defended in 2018. She was awarded the Erasmus Mundus MARHABA grant to do a six-month exchange program at Universidad de Santiago de Compostela in Spain in 2017. She received her Master and Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Library and Information Science from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences respectively.

Tania has worked in International Relations Office of Tehran University of Medical Sciences since September 2010 as a researcher where she has contributed to international programs of quality assurance of the university and the related recognition programs.

Tania has authored several papers in the field of health information management and translated books into Persian in the field of project management for healthcare information technology and healthcare information systems.

Franco Burgio

Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, Europe

Programme Manager of Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) at European Commission (EC).

Elham Ehsani

National Institute for Health Research, Iran

Assistant Professor of Health Services Management at National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Tehran University of Medical Sciences. She is also the head of Human Resource for Health group in NIHR. Elham holds a PhD degree in Health Services Management as well as MPH certificate in Social Determinants of Health. She has a lot of research experience in the field of human resources for health both in demand and supply (education) sides, planning and management of health resources, social determinants of health and global health and authored several papers and books.

Aliakbar Haghdoost

Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Iran

Professor of epidemiology at Kerman University of Medical Sciences (KUMS). He holds a diploma and doctorate of philosophy in epidemiology and bio-statistics from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has several years of research experience in infectious disease epidemiology, medical education, public health, cost-effectiveness, and modeling analysis. He has also contributed/ provided consultations in many mutual projects with Iran’s ministry of health and medical education (MoHME) and WHO in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Christoph Hamelmann

World Health Organization

Christoph Hamelmann is the UNDP Regional Team leader for Health and Development in Europe, Central Asia and the Arab States, and Global Coordinator of the United Nations Interagency Task Force on Sustainable Procurement in the Health Sector. He has worked for over 25 years in Africa, America, Asia and Europe as a senior advisor and executive for global health initiatives in the public and private sectors, for governments, nongovernmental organizations and international research institutions on preventive and curative medicine and on a multi-sectoral approach to communicable and non-communicable diseases, focusing on social, economic and environmental determinants of health and health equity. He is a consultant in family and tropical medicine and an economist; he holds postgraduate degrees in molecular biology, epidemiology and health systems management. Currently, he serves as the WHO Representative in Iran.

Albrecht Jahn

Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Germany

Albrecht Jahn is a medical doctor with a specialization in obstetrics and gynecology, and community health. He heads the research group on “Global Health Policies and Systems” since 2010 with a focus on the post-2015 agenda, universal health coverage, access to medicines, reproductive health, and migrant health.
After clinical work in Germany, Kenya and Tanzania he specialized in obstetrics and gynecology in 1991. After additional training in Community Health and Health Management he joined the Institute of Tropical Hygiene at the University of Heidelberg as senior lecturer and researcher on maternal and perinatal health care systems in 1992 and later headed the Institute’s consultancy unit.  He then worked with the European Union’s Directorate General for Research as Scientific Officer from 2004 to 2010, covering international public health and health system as well as reproductive health including maternal health. He was member of WHO’s Consultative Expert Working Group on Research and Development: Financing and Coordination, and is currently appointed as Marsilius Fellow at Heidelberg University with an interdisciplinary project on the right to health and universal health coverage.

Mohammad Jalili

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Meri Koivusalo

University of Tampere, Finland

Professor, Global Health and Development

Meri is expertised in global and transnational health and social policy, trade and global governance for health. She is "globally" interested in global health issues, but she has a particular interest in the relationship between economic globalization, trade and health, health systems and politics and practice of global health policy-making. Meri has a background in public health medicine with a PhD in environmental health and MSc from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has co-authored and edited academic and textbooks in the area of global health as well as worked with Finnish government, European Commission, WHO-Geneva, UNRISD and a number of international nongovernmental organizations. Meri is currently member of the WHO expert panel on science and technology.

Flemming Kondradsen

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Professor, and Head of Global Health Section at Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen. Flemming Konradsen, professor of international environmental health at the University of Copenhagen, has more than twenty years of research and programming experience in the field of environmental health and global health. He is also the director of the Copenhagen School of Global Health. Professor Konradsen focuses his research on human health related to water supply, sanitation and hygiene; acute pesticide poisoning; and control of vector borne diseases in Asia, Africa and Europe. Research methods include epidemiology, qualitative studies, costing studies, health promotion and health system analysis. He has extensive experience from multidisciplinary field-based research.

Professor Konradsen is responsible for a number of programs aimed at building research capacity at university level in Asia and Africa and has significant involvement with educational programs in East Africa, South Asia and the Nordic region. Flemming Konradsen has worked for international research organisations, universities, development NGOs and national research organizations.

Anja Krumeich

University of Maastricht, Netherland

Dr. Krumeich is director of the Global Health program at Maastricht University. She is Full Professor of Translational Ethnographies in Global Health and Education, a chair position embedded within the Department of Health, Ethics and Society. She is also Chair for the Platform Internationalization Education of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences.  In addition, she is Adjunct Professor the Dept. for Public Health at Manipal University, and Adjunct Professor at Thailand's Thammasat University. In 2016, she received Maastricht's Wijnand Wijnen Prize for her work in global health education and contribution to building international partnerships

Reza Majdzadeh

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Reza Majdzadeh is a Senior Lecturer in the interdisciplinary research and practice division who became a professor of Epidemiology at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2009. He has a solid commitment to research dissemination and has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers in international journals touching on domains relevant to Global Health, including equity, health systems research, and the production and utilisation of research evidence.

For the past 15 years, he has been deeply involved in the planning, management and delivery of academic courses, including four educational degree programmes: Master of Science in Health Technology Assessment, MD and Master of Public Health (MPH) dual degree, five minors in the MPH and international MPH. In addition, he has been responsible for the hands-on delivery of courses on basic and advanced epidemiology courses, research methodology, qualitative research, social determinants of health, health equity, health systems, evidence-based public health and knowledge translation during his academic career. His peers and students have recognised his teaching, and he has received several awards and honours in research and education. In 2023, he attained the Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), highlighting his dedication to excellence in the field of education.

He has held high-level positions within the Iranian health research community. He was the head of Iran's National Institute of Health Research, where he directly provided evidence for policymaking. He worked intensively on developing a monitoring and evaluation system for the national Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programme - this included addressing inequality in access to health services, monitoring health expenditures and financial protection. In addition to these research- and policy-relevant posts, he was responsible for establishing two research centres in the country: one focused on community-based participatory research and the other on Knowledge Utilisation Research Centre. The former's primary interest is research for empowering communities to close the inequality gap, and the latter focuses on using evidence for policy-level decisions.

Anneli Milen

Tampere University, Finland

Professor Emerita, of Global Health and development at Tampere University. Anneli has expertise in global influences on health policy and health systems. She has a keen interest in the role of politics and ideologies in health and wellbeing across the globe. Anneli completed her Master´s and PhD in Finland and another Master´s Degree in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She has academic experience in public health, has run a consultancy agency with a number of large EU-funded development projects, functioned as advisor in the Finnish national government, worked for WHO/Geneva and served long-term and short-term in about 30 countries.

Rita Mojtahedzadeh

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Dr. Rita Mojtahedzadeh has PhD in e-learning Planning. She is one of the founders of Virtual School of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and currently a faculty member of e-Learning in Medical Education Department in this school; meanwhile she is second-affiliated faculty member of Medical Education Department in Virtual University of Medical Sciences. She has been one of principal investigators of several research projects in the field of e-learning and medical education in Iran, some are as follows: academic ranking of medical schools, metrics systems of faculties members’ activities, comprehensive educational award system, and comprehensive system of e-continuous medical education (e-CME), national institutional accreditation system of e-learning centers and so on. Now she, as the core responsible body, is working on development and establishment of Iran's national Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform and national Learning Management System (LMS). She has published several articles and books in related fields.

Kazem Naddafi

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Dean of School of Public Health at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

Mohammad Hossein Nekoofar

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Dr. Mohammad Hossein Nekoofar is an academic member of Endodontics department in Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) where he received his DDs (1989). For his M.Sc, he worked on Electronic Root Canal Length Measurement Devices (1993,TUMS). In 1994, he became a Diplomate of the Iranian board of Endodontics. His PhD projects were focused on investigating Calcium Silicate cements and lead to his graduation in 2011 from Cardiff University, UK. Working on Regenerative Endodontics and Stem Cells, he is already responsible for teaching in department of Tissue Engineering and Applied Cell Sciences in TUMS.

Dr. Nekoofar also has a strong sense of leadership and management. He has been the president of Iranian Association of Endodontics since 2013 and the Group Leader of Endodontolgy Research Group in Cardiff University since 2004 up to now.

Alireza Olyaeemanesh

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Head of SDH secretariat at Ministry of Health

Professor of Health Policy, Head of Health System Finance & Payment Department at National Institute of Health Research, Head of Health Equity Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences

Remco van de Pas

Maastricht University, Netherland

Dr. Remco van de Pas is a public health doctor and a global health researcher. He has a position as senior research fellow global health policy at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp and is a lecturer in Global health at the Department of Health Ethics and Society, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University.

His teaching and research focuses on global health governance, its political-economy and foreign policy with a special attention on health workforce development and migration, health system strengthening, social protection and health financing, global health security, globalization and its impact on health equity.

Remco is a board member of the Medicus Mundi International–Network Health for All!, a visiting research fellow at Clingendael, Netherlands Institute of International Relations and editorial board member of the academic journal Globalization and Health.

Marc van de Putten

Thammasat University, Thailand

Professor of Global Health at Thammasat University, Faculty of Public Health.

Significant experience as docent in undergraduate and graduate programs at reputed academic institutes; demonstrated internationally recognized research records; extensive experience in program evaluations and curriculum development; consulting experience with international and governmental agencies; background and experience in mental health, health promotion, health program management and health systems development issues.

Specialties: Evaluation studies, case study research, policy analysis, qualitative methods

Sameen Siddiqi

Aga Khan University, Pakistan

Dr. Sameen Siddiqi is the Professor and Chair, Department of Community Health Sciences, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. Earlier, he worked for WHO as the Director, Health System Development in the Eastern Mediterranean Region and spearheaded work on universal health coverage. He has also served as WHO’s Representative to Lebanon and Iran.

He has worked for over two decades in health system development and has special interest its governance, quality and safety of care, private health sector and public private partnership. He has over 70 publications and is the reviewer of international journals. He is on the Advisory Group of the upcoming WHO’s Global Academy, Geneva.

Amir Ali Sohrabpour

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Amir Ali Sohrabpour is a gastroenterologist at TUMS. He has served in various roles of educational leadership including director of Internal Medicine residency program, head of mentoring office at faculty of Medicine, head of TUMS faculty development office, and deputy of education at Shariati Hospital (600-bed university hospital in Tehran). He is now vice-chancellor for education at TUMS. He is an instructor of courses in leadership and medical professionalism. (CV)

Amirhossein Takian

Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Amirhossein Takian (MD MPH PhD FHEA) is Chair and Associate Professor at the Department of Global Health & Public Policy, and Vice-Dean for International Affairs at the School of Public Health (SPH)- Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Iran. He is also Advisor for Medical Education Reform and Member of the National Examination Board for Health Policy, Economics and Management, at the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME)- Iran. Amir is Chief Research Officer at the Health Equity Research Centre (HERC)- TUMS and TUMS’ focal point at M8 Alliance, serving as a member of World Health Summit (WHS) Executive Committee since 2017, and Secretary of 7th World Health Summit Regional Meeting, 2019. From 2013-2018, he was Deputy for International Organizations at the MOHME-Iran, overseeing the relationship between Iran and global organizations, i.e. WHO, UNDP, UN, UNICEF, UNFPA, etc. Dr. Takian is a member of National Committee for Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases, MOHME, Iran; member of National Academy of Medical Sciences, Iran; member of Steering Committee for National Health Assembly- Iran; member of advisory committee on health information technology (HIT), AcademyHealth- USA; member of editorial board at the International Journal of Health Policy and Management; and Associate Editor at the International Journal of Public Health