Elena Petelos - President

Elena Petelos is a Senior Research Fellow in Public Health and a Lecturer in Evidence-Based Medicine and Evidence-Informed Policy at the University of Crete (Greece) and at Maastricht University (The Netherlands). She also teaches at Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Germany) and is Adjunct Faculty at the newly founded University of West Attica (Greece). She has a background in medicine and biology, specialising in molecular oncology, and re-training mid-career in health economics and policy, continuing with a Fellowship in Governance and Economics of Development Technology and Innovation at the United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology.

She currently also serves as the Vice President of the Health Technology Assessment section, a Member of the Steering Committee of the Law and Public Health Section, a Member of the Infectious Disease Control section, and the Chair of the Gender Equality Working Group (SDG5 WG) at the European Public Health Association. She is the Co-Chair for Real-World Evidence and Artificial Intelligence at HTAi, a Member of the Healthcare Professional’s Working Party of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and a Member of the Advisory Forum of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response (HERA) of the European Commission. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of the European Forum for Primary Care leading the Vaccines WG and representing it in the European Network of Centres for Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacovigilance (ENCePP). She also serves in ENCEPP’s WG2 on Transparency and Independent Research.

Her research, policy and advocacy work focuses on international collaboration, including regulatory frameworks and legislative frameworks, to improve global health and towards achieving digital equity and reaching UHC, with special emphasis on real-world evidence, benefit/risk communication, new technologies, and artificial intelligence. She is also a member of the Royal Netherlands Society of International Law (KNVIR) and of the International Law Association (ILA).

Regien Biesma - Vice president

Dr Regien Biesma is an epidemiologist and public health specialist with a research focus on assessing and reducing inequalites in reproductive, maternal and child health and nutrition outcomes and determinants. A substantial part of her work is interdisciplinary and takes place in low-and middle-income countries.

Currently based at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands, she is actively involved in teaching global health at both undergraduate and postgraduate level within the medical faculty. Moreover, she is supervising several PhD candidates engaged in implementation and policy research aimed at improving equitable acces to reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health services. She recently received a research grant on interdisciplinary research to improve food and nutrition security by enhancing women empowerment in Bangladesh and Ethiopia. Additonally, she is committed to child growth monitoring initatives to improve the prevention and early detection of child malnutrition in Uganda.

Before joining UMCG in 2018, she spent 11 years at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland where she worked on health systems and policy research in Africa and Asia. She was an invited expert for the World Health Organization expert consultation on maximizing positive synergies between health systems and global health Initiatives.

She is a research fellow at the Aletta School of Public Health, the Netherlands and member of the Global Health Law Group at the University of Groningen. Previously she held visiting positions at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Developmental Origins of Adult Health and Disease (DOHaD) centre at Southampton University.

Regien is the Chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Conference of Public Health at Dublin 2023.

Greg Williams - Vice president

Greg Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Deputy Director of the Master of Public Health programme at The University of Manchester, where he leads on teaching Global Health. He is also the Vice-President of the Urban Public Health section of EUPHA and Global Lead for Europe at UrbanHealth360.

As well as his teaching-focused role, Greg is a keen researcher and has an extensive background in public health research including local, national and international research projects. He has worked on and managed projects ranging from urban health indicator data collection to healthy ageing interventions, through to the evaluation of programmes aimed at reducing health inequalities.

As well as a background in public health research and teaching, Greg has been on the organising/scientific committee of the International Conference of Urban Health, the International Festival of Public Health, the Society for Social Medicine’s annual scientific meeting, the European Conference on Urban Health and the European Public Health Conference. Greg is also a member of multiple international networks and is an NGO Representative at the United Nations Office at Geneva.