Caroline Costongs

Caroline Costongs is the Director of EuroHealthNet, the European partnership for improving health, social equity, and wellbeing, based in Brussels. She leads a multidisciplinary team working on European Union and (sub)national policy, research, and capacity building to address health inequalities and the social determinants of health. She oversees EuroHealthNet’s Framework Agreement with the European Commission (2022–2026) and leads activities advancing EuroHealthNet’s Memorandum of Understanding with WHO Europe (2021–2026). Caroline is Commissioner of the Lancet Commission on a European Health Union and an advisory member of the European Health Forum Gastein. She is active in various EU and WHO fora, serves on advisory boards of European projects, and is a member of the International Council for the European Public Health Conference (ICC).

Caroline has a strong international background with 30 years of public health and health promotion experience. In 1992 she started 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 in Belgium in 2003. Caroline graduated from the University of Maastricht with a MSc in Public Health.