Governance

Suzanne Costello is the Chief Executive of the Institute of Public Health in Ireland. She has overall responsibility for the strategic direction of the Institute. With a background in senior management across a range of health and social issues, Suzanne joined the Institute as Chief Executive at the end of 2018. Prior to joining the Institute, Suzanne served at the CEO of Alcohol Action Ireland and also acted as the Interim Policy Programme Lead for the HSE’s Alcohol Programme. Suzanne was Samaritans Executive Director for Ireland for six years. Suzanne has a primary degree in Social Science from University College Dublin, an MBS, and a Professional Diploma in Strategy, Innovation and Change from the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business and was a member of the inaugural Healthy Ireland Council.

Suzanne was elected President of EuroHealthNet at the 2024 General Council Meeting.

Sumina is the National Director of Policy and International Health at Public Health Wales, and leads three teams (Policy; the Wales Health Impact Assessment Support Unit; and the Health and Sustainability Hub). She has a broad portfolio of work, which includes Futures and Foresight; improving population health through policy in various areas, including tackling poor housing, fuel poverty and trade; and supporting the embedding of the sustainable development principle as part of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act.

Sumina has worked in public health since 2005, at a local, regional and national level, and across the domains of public health. This has included undertaking projects on a wide range of topics, such as mental health, prison health, tackling obesity, and improving vaccination uptake, and working with partners from different sectors, including local government and the third sector.

Prior to working in public health, Sumina trained in internal medicine. She has maintained an interest in public health education and supervision, including teaching medical and postgraduate students, supervision of trainees in public health, and supervising students undertaking public health research projects at Cardiff University and Maastricht University.

Pia Sundell is the Executive Director for the Finnish Children’s Welfare Association, having held the position since 2008. She is an expert regarding children’s rights and child welfare, having worked in child welfare for the last twenty years.

Joining the Executive Board, Pia states that investments in wellbeing and health are long-term joint decisions. In addition, NGO’s must have a strong role in implementing them. As a member of the board for SOSTE Finnish Federation for Social Affairs and Health, Pia promotes the goal to increase the impact of social and healthcare organisations in society in order to achieve a situation where the implementation of the preconditions for a good life are realised for all.

Pia looks forward to working with a European network to promote questions regarding social affairs and health. As an active member of a Nordic network that works to promote child welfare and children’s right, Pia feels a network such as EuroHealthNet provides the platform to both contribute and learn from.

She is motivated to create international impact as a member of the Executive Board and is a strong believer in networking to promote change for better social welfare and health equity in Europe.

Dr. Mojca Gabrijelčič Blenkuš is the Head of the Healthy Lifestyle Department at the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ) in Slovenia. She is a medical doctor and a specialist in public health and 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. 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 Faculty of Health Sciences where she teaches health promotion theory and health in all policies.

As well as national nutrition and physical activity strategic policy development, Mojca participated in the assessment of the health impacts of agriculture and nutrition policies in Slovenia, with a special emphasis on assessing the impact of accession of Slovenia to EU and health equity. She coordinated the evaluation of the Slovene nutrition policy in 2010 and the working group for the preparation of the national nutrition and health enhancing physical activity strategy for 2015-25. In the period 2014 – 2016 she coordinated the background activities and stakeholders involvement in the process of preparation of the Slovene active and healthy ageing strategy.

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, and of the drafting groups for the preparation of the ‘WHO Steps to Health – A European Framework to promote Physical Activity for Health 2007’ document. She has been actively involved in the work of the WHO action networks on nutrition and inequalities since 2008. At the EU level, she participates 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.

Raffaella is the Head of the Health Equity ISS Operative Unit at the Italian Institute of Health. Since 1992, she has worked as a researcher at Istituto Superiore di Sanità – ISS  (the Italian National Institute of Health) and since 2019 she has been Director of the Unit Health Equity ISS – HEISS.

She has been responsible for the development of operational research initiatives to improve the quality of care of people with HIV infection in African countries and for conducting projects to tackle health inequalities at national and European level. Since 2018, she has been the project coordinator of the Joint Action Health Equity Europe (JAHEE) funded by CHAFEA (3rd EU Health Programme) and of a national project on health equity within the National Prevention Plan (A health equity focused National Prevention Plan (NPP) 2020-2025: Putting Health Equity Audit (HEA) in practice: from the National Prevention Plan (NPP) to each Regional Prevention Plan RPP) funded by Italian Ministry of Health.

Since 2020, she has been member of the Scientific Working Group of the Italian Health Equity Status Report (IHESR) coordinated by WHO Regional Office for Europe and the coordinator of the  working group on SDG3 (ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages) for ASVIS (Alleanza Italiana per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile) of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.

Professor Plamen Dimitrov is the Director of the Bulgarian National Center of Public Health and Analyses. Dr. Dimitrov graduated in Medicine in 1988. He has MS degree in Epidemiology (2001), a PhD degree in Social Medicine and Health Management (2004), and a Master of Public Health (2011). His professional interests are in the field of public health, chronic non-communicable diseases, health promotion and disease prevention, social determinants of health, epidemiology and biostatistics. He has been a chair and member of working groups engaged with the development of the Bulgarian national programs, strategies and reports related to health, e.g.  chair of working group of the MoH for preparation of the National Program on non-communicable diseases prevention (currently National coordinator of the Program); chair and member of working group of the MoH for preparation of the Report on the health of the citizens and implementation of the National Health Strategy. He has been a consultant to WHO on NCDs, and currently is the WHO national focal point for Noncommunicable diseases, and for Equity, social determinants, gender equality and human rights. He is also the in-country project director for projects within the Public Health Program of the EU. He is an International Affiliated Faculty at the Institute for Global Health, Michigan State University, USA, and a Professor at the South-West University, Bulgaria.

Daniela Kallayova is the Senior Public Health Officer at the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic, responsible for health promotion and disease prevention, with a focus on cancer control and the health of vulnerable groups. She is a member of the Steering Group on Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and the Management of Non-Communicable Diseases and a member of the EU4Health Steering Group within the European Commission. Her previous professional experiences include a position of Vice Dean for International Affairs (2008-2011) and Head of the Public Health Department (2010-2011) within the Faculty of Health Care and Social Work, Trnava University, Slovakia.

Lisa Leonardini is the Health and Social Manager for the Veneto Region in Italy. She is a psychologist and psychotherapist who has a Master’s degree in drafting and managing European projects. She has served as the technical coordinator of the ProMIS (Programma Mattone Internazionale Salute) since 2010. Additionally, Lisa has assumed the role of manager of the Health and Social Area at the Veneto Region since 2022.

Previously, Lisa directed an NGO specialising in social services. Lisa’s responsibilities covered a wide range of critical areas including: education, communities for unaccompanied minors, centres for asylum seekers, therapeutic communities for drug addiction, social and labour inclusion, prevention, and wellbeing promotion.

Yvette Shajanian Zarneh is the Head of Unit for the Planning, Strategy, Knowledge Transfer, International Relations at the Federal Institute of Public Health (BIÖG) which is a specialist authority within the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Health in Germany. She joined BIÖG as Scientific Project Officer in 2014 and holds a Master’s degree in Political Science and in Management of Health and Social Services. She brings more than 20 years of experience as a researcher and project manager in the fields of public health, health care system development, and financing, also at the international level, and is responsible for the international activities and representation of the Federal Institute of Public Health. In this capacity, she is a member of national and international public health associations, networks, and committees.

Prof. Marc Suhrcke is head of the cross-departmental Research Programme on ‘Health & Health Systems’ at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), a role he has held since 2017. Until 2022, he also served as Professor of Global Health Economics at the Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York, United Kingdom. Prior to his positions at LISER and York, Marc was Professor of Public Health Economics at the University of East Anglia (UEA), and held research roles with several international institutions, including the World Health Organization, the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, the University of Hamburg, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, the European Commission, and the Hamburg Institute for International Economics.

Marc’s research focuses on a wide range of issues in health economics, both in Europe and globally. His work examines the socio-economic determinants and consequences of health and health inequalities, and the evaluation of population- and system-level policies on health and related outcomes. He is particularly interested in using observational data to uncover meaningful, ideally causal, relationships.

His research has been funded by a variety of national and international organisations, including the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the European Commission, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Department of Health (England), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Newton Fund.

Marc currently holds a number of honorary academic positions. He is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at both the Centre for Health Economics at the University of York and the Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia. He also serves as an Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow in the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge. In addition, he is a member of the World Health Organization Europe’s Scientific Expert Advisory Group on Health Equity, as well as its New Economics Expert Group (NEEG).

He is deeply committed to advancing the use of rigorous evidence to inform public health and social policy, and values international collaboration as a means to improve health equity and systems performance across Europe and beyond.

For a full list of Marc’s academic publications, please visit his Google Scholar page.

Bernard Waśko is the Director of the National Institute of Public Health in Poland, a position he has held since 2023. With over 30 years of experience in the healthcare sector, he is an expert in health system performance, healthcare quality, and strategic development, having served in senior management roles in large public hospitals (1998–2011), and later as Medical Director at PwC Poland (2011–2019).

Throughout his career, Bernard has led numerous projects focused on the organisation, optimisation, restructuring and strategic advisory of healthcare systems in Poland and the Central and Eastern European region. He is the co-author and principal architect of the Healthcare Performance Index for Poland, first published in 2015 and updated annually through to 2019, offering a comprehensive evaluation of system efficiency and outcomes.

As Vice President for Medical Affairs at the National Health Fund (2019–2022), Bernard played a key role in introducing national regulations for key performance indicators (KPIs) in publicly funded healthcare services. He collaborated closely with the Ministry of Health in preparing the Act on Quality and Patient Safety, which was adopted in mid-2023. In the same year, he was appointed by the Ministry as Chair of the Task Team responsible for the implementation of executive regulations on quality indicators across the Polish healthcare system.

He is also an active member of the National Oncology Council, where he contributes to the implementation of the National Oncology Network and the development of a comprehensive set of performance indicators, both general and tumour-specific, aimed at improving cancer care outcomes.

At present, Bernard is leading the development of the Health Index for Poland, an interactive tool designed to assess disparities in health status and determinants, as well as to evaluate health system performance at both national and regional levels. The Index also incorporates patient experience and needs, offering a multidimensional perspective on public health.