The commissioners come from a wide variety of countries; Ghana, India, the US, Norway, Japan, Thailand, Palestine, Canada and Belgium. They represent different fields of expertise and experience, and they all stand out for their impressive contributions to their fields.
The Commission will in total count around 15 members and the complete list of its members will be published within the next few days.
So far, the confirmed commission members are:
Rector Ole Petter Ottersen (Norway)
Ole Petter Ottersen is the Rector at University of Oslo. He is also professor of Anatomy. He has been Vice-Dean of Research at the Medical Faculty, and headed the Centre for Molecular Biology and Neuroscience – one of Norway’s centres of excellence.
Blouin, Chantal (Canada)
Professor Chantal Blouin is Associate Director of the Centre for Trade Policy and Law, and Co-director of the Health and Foreign Policy Initiative at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University. Dr. Blouin is also the editor of the Health Diplomacy Monitor and in 2008-2009, she was a Senior Fellow at the Canadian International Council. Her research interests include among others trade and health, global health and labour mobility.
Buss, Paulo Marchiori (Brazil)
Professor Buss is Director of Brazil’s national institute of public health, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation’s (FIOCRUZ) Center for Global Health. He has previously represented Brazil in the World Health Organization’s Executive Council (2004-2007 and 2008-2011), been a member of the Executive Board of the International Association of National Institutes of Public Health (IANPHI) (2006-2009) and President of the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) (2008-2010). He was a founder and the first Executive Director of the Brazilian Association for Collective Health (ABRASCO). From March 2006 to March 2008 he served as Chair of the Brazilian Commission on Social Determinants of Health and was the coordinator in Brazil of the World Conference on Social Determinants of Health (2011).
Chongsuvivatwong, Virasakdi (Thailand)
Virasakdi Chongsuvivatwong is currently a professor of Community Medicine at Prince of Songkla University, Hatyai, southern Thailand. He has been running an International Programme for Graduate Study for Asian students since 1992. He also served as a WHO visiting consultant to various research institutes in Asia over 40 times, mostly on proposal development and data analysis.
Dasgupta, Jashodhara (India)
Ms Jashodhara Dasgupta is the Coordinator of SAHAYOG (Lucknow), an NGO working with women's health and gender equality using human rights frameworks. She has been working with issues of women's rights in Uttar Pradesh for nearly 25 years and is currently a researcher and policy advocate on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Frenk, Julio (US/Mexico)
Since January 2009, Dr. Julio Frenk is Dean of the Faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health and T & G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development. Dr. Frenk served as the Minister of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, where he introduced universal health insurance. He has also held leadership positions at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico, the Mexican Health Foundation, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Carso Health Institute.He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine of Mexico.In September of 2008, Dr. Frenk received the Clinton Global Citizen Award for changing “the way practitioners and policy makers across the world think about health.”
Fukuda-Parr, Sakiko (Japan)
Fukuda-Parr is a development economist and professor of International Affairs at the New School. She has worked on a broad range of issue related to global poverty and development, and currently specializes in human rights and economic policy. She was the lead author and director of the UNDP Development Reports 1995-2004. She was appointed to the UN Committee for Development Policy andserves n boards of several NGOs that advocate human rights and technology for development.
Giacaman, Rita (Palestine)
Professor Rita Giacaman is director of the Department of International Community Health at Birzeit University in Palestine. As a researcher and practitioner, she was active in the development of the Palestinian primary health care model, including the use of community health workers. Giacaman is a leading scholar in the Palestinian women’s movement and her main research interests are mental health system building in war like conditions, social epidemiology and women’s health.
Gawanas, Bience Philomina (Namibia)
H.E. Advocate Bience Gawanas has since her return from 12 years of exile in 1989, served in different capacities in Namibia including being a member of the Public Service Commission and the Ombudswoman. She has been a gender law lecturer at the University of Namibia, a Member and a Chairperson of the Law Reform and Development Commission as well as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Namibia. She was a teacher in SWAPO’s exiles’ centers in Angola, Cuba and Zambia. Since 2003, she has been Commissioner for Social Affairs on the African Union Commission.
Gyapong, John (Ghana)
Professor John Gyapong the Pro-Vice Chancellor in charge of Research, Innovation and Development of the University of Ghana. He is a Public Health Physician. He studied medicine in Ghana and Public Health and Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine of the University of London. His main area of research is infectious disease epidemiology, especially lymphatic filariasis and other neglected tropical disease and malaria. He has been involved in several large scale field epidemiological trials in Ghana. For over 10years he was Director for Research and Development of the Ghana Health Service where he was also Programme Director of the Ghana-Netherlands Programme for Health Research and Development. Before assuming responsibility as Pro-Vice Chancellor he was the Vice-Dean and Professor of Public Health at the School of Public Health of the University of Ghana, and an Adjunct Professor of International Health at the Georgetown University in Washington..
Leaning, Jennifer (USA)
Jennifer Leaning is Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health. She is also Associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the FXB Centre for Health and Human Rights. From 2005-2009, Dr. Leaning founded and co-directed the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Dr. Leaning's research and policy interests include among others issues of public health, international humanitarian law in crisis settings and problems of human security in the context of forced migration and conflict.
Marmot, Michael (United Kingdom)
Sir Marmot is Director of the International Institute of Society and Health and MRC Research Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University College London (UCL). Marmot has led a research group on health inequalities for the past 30 years and chaired the Commission on Social Determinants of Health set up by the World Health Organization in 2005. Marmot is also engaged in several international research efforts on the social determinants of health and in 2000 he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to Epidemiology and understanding health inequalities.
McNeil, Desmond (Norway)
Professor Desmond Mc Neill is the Director of the Research School at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo. He has previously been the director of SUM and has also been a lecturer at The University College London and the University of Edinburgh.McNeill has worked as a consultant for the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). His main research fields are governance, sustainable development and the relationship between research and policy.
Mongella, Amb. Gertrude (Tanzania)
Mongella was the first President of the Pan-African Parliament, elected in 2004. Previously, she had among others served as Member of Parliament in Tanzania, as Goodwill Ambassador to the WHO, as Leader of the OAU Election Observer Team to Zimbabwe, as Member of the Regional reproductive health task force in the WHO Africa region and as President of the NGO Advocacy for Women in Africa. Mongella has also served as UN Assistant Secretary General and Secretary General for the Forth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, and has since been known as “Mama Beijing”. In 2005, Mongella received the Delta Prize for Global Understanding. Since 2008, she has served as Chair of the International Advisory Board at the African Press Organisation.
Moyo, Nkosana D. (Zimbabwe)
Dr. Moyo is Founder and Executive Chairman of the Mandela Institute for Development Studies. Previously, Moyo har served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the African Development Bank and as senior advisor and chairman of the Actis Africa Advisory Board, Actis Capital, LLP. He also served on the boards of a number of companies in the cement, sugar, finance, tourism, mining, airline and food sectors. Moyo has also served as Minister of Industry and International Trade of Zimbabwe.
Møgedal, Sigrun (Norway)
Dr. Sigrun Møgedal is a Special Adviser at the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services. She is a member of the Independent Monitoring Board for the Polio Eradication initiative and a Board Member of the Medicines Patent Pool. She served as the Ambassador for HIV/AIDS and Global Health Initiatives in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ambassador from 2005 until retirement in March 2011, and before that in various posts in the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. From 2000-2001 she was State Secretary for International Development in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Møgedal was the Chair of the Board for the Global Health Workforce Alliance from 2007 to 2010 and has also served as a Board Member for Norway in the Board of The Global Fund to Fight Aids,TB and Malaria (GFATM), the Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) and UNITAID. Møgedal was Director at Centre for Partnership in Development (DIS) in Oslo, Norway and has worked in Nepal with Primary Health Care Development and as the Health Services Director of the United Mission to Nepal.
Ooms, Gorik (Belgium)
Professor Gorik Ooms is a human rights lawyer. He became Executive Director of Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium in 2004 and in 2008 he obtained a Ph.D. in Medical Science from the University of Ghent. He was appointed as Global Justice Fellow at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University 2009-2010. Currently Ooms is Professor at the Department of Public Health at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium.