WHO Director-General announces senior team

Abstract

Last month, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan announced the names of her senior team. Among the 11 Assistant Director-General appointments and reappointments are three that will head new organisational divisions. Hannah Brown takes a look at the people and the changes. Deputy Director-General In one of her first moves as Director General, Margaret Chan reinstated the position of Deputy Director-General, not used as a full-time position since August, 1992, with the appointment of Anarfi Asamoa-Baah from Ghana, announced ahead of the Assistant Director-General positions on Jan 10. Asamoa-Baah joined WHO in 1998 as a senior policy adviser to then Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland. He progressed through a series of top jobs in the organisation, including Executive Director for External Relations and Executive Director for Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals, before being appointed Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases and then for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in October, 2005. Before joining WHO, Asamoa-Baah had risen through the public-health ranks in his native Ghana, reaching the position of Director of Medical Services for Ghana in 1997. He is a medical doctor with a degree from the Ghana Medical School in Korle-Bu, and has done postgraduate stints in both the UK and USA, including gaining qualifications in community health, health economics, and public policy. According to WHO, Asamoa-Baah's role as Deputy Director-General will involve assisting Margaret Chan in managing the organisation and raising WHO's profile and leadership in health development. Assistant Director-General—Health Action in Crises Alwan will head one of three new clusters created in Chan's first round of reorganisation at WHO. The new top-tier division elevates the Health Action in Crisis department, which Alwan has directed since 2005 when he took over from David Nabarro, who was seconded to New York as UN Systems Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza. Alwan came to Geneva from Iraq, his home country, where he was minister of health and education between 2003 and 2005, in the crucial years after the start of the Iraq war. Before taking this government job, Alwan was WHO's country representative in Jordan; he has also held WHO posts in Geneva as Director of Noncommunicable Diseases Prevention and Director of Noncommunicable Diseases Management, in Oman as WHO's country representative, and in the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office as Director of the Division of Health Systems Development. After graduating in medicine from the University of Alexandria, Alwan moved to the UK to pursue further training and qualifications and then practised medicine in Scotland before returning to Iraq. Alwan held several academic, clinical, and public-health positions in Iraq, including professor and dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Assistant Director-General—Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health Reappointed by Chan to the position she held under Lee Jong-wook, Catherine Le Galès-Camus has watched over the Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health Cluster through a significant strengthening of WHO's mandate and activities in these areas. During Galès-Camus's tenure, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control opened for signing; the World Health Assembly adopted the WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health and 13 other noncommunicable disease-related resolutions; and WHO launched the first global report on road traffic accidents and the first child growth standards. A French national, Galès-Camus has a PhD in economics from the University of Paris and did subsequent research into the economics of prevention; measurement of the state of health in populations, and the economic appraisal of medical technology. Before joining WHO, she was a scientific adviser to the Director-General of Health in France. She says she is strongly committed to promoting mental health and the reduction of the burden associated with mental and neurological disorders, including substance abuse. Assistant Director-General—Information, Evidence and Research Tim Evans' new cluster of Information, Evidence and Research superficially seems to have undergone only a slight change from its previous title of Evidence and Information for Policy, which includes WHO's publishing operations. This group, which Evans had led since he was appointed by Lee Jong-wook in 2003, helps to “build the evidence base to help improve the process for health systems policy decisions”. Evans came to WHO after 6 years at the Rockefeller Foundation, where he was responsible for the development and implementation of programme strategy aimed at redressing disparities in health. Before that appointment, Evans held clinical positions at Brigham and Women's Hospital between 1992—after qualifying in medicine at McMaster University in his home country of Canada—and 1997, with a 2-year break to take up an assistant professor post at the Harvard School of Public Health. Evans initially studied for a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree from the University of Ottawa, Canada, and a DPhil in Agricultural Economics from the University of Oxford, UK. Evans was a founding board member of both the Global Forum for Health Research and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, now the GAVI Alliance. Assistant Director-General—Communicable Diseases David Heymann's temporary charge of the Communicable Diseases cluster, which he took over from Chan when she put herself forward for the Director-General post, has been now been made permanent, although he retains the title of Representative of the Director-General for Polio Eradication. Heymann has had a long career association with WHO, which began with a 2-year stint in India working on the smallpox eradication programme in 1974–75. He spent the subsequent 13 years working as a medical epidemiologist in various countries of sub-Saharan Africa on behalf of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During this time, Heymann participated in the investigation of the first outbreak of ebola virus in 1976. Heymann first gained a BA from Pennsylvania State University before getting an MD from Wake Forest University and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. He joined WHO headquarters in Geneva in 1988, and held several different posts in communicable disease control, including Executive Director of the Communicable Diseases Cluster, before becoming Assistant Director General. Assistant Director-General—Family and Community Health Since the departure of former Assistant Director-General Joy Phumaphi, who moved to the World Bank to become Vice President and Head of Human Development in February, Elizabeth Mason has been in charge of the Family and Community Health cluster, ad interim. Director of Child and Adolescent Health and Development since September 2004, Mason joined WHO in 1993, initially in the inter-country office for southern Africa. She held several posts within WHO's African regional office, including as an adviser on the integrated management of childhood illness, before moving to the Geneva headquarters in 2004. Next month, however, Mason is due to be replaced permanently as Assistant Director-General for Family and Community Health by Daisy Mafubelu, currently health attaché for the Permanent Mission of South Africa to the UN. Mafubelu initially trained as a nurse, and spent 13 years working in that field, but she also has a degree in business administration and a post-graduate diploma in health management. She held several positions within the South African government before her move to Geneva. Assistant Director-General—AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Hiroki Nakatani came to WHO from the Japanese government where he was Director-General at the Department of Health and Welfare of Disabled Persons. According to WHO, during a long career at the ministry he acquired extensive technical experience in public health, including tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, as well as immunisation, non-communicable diseases, health promotion, health emergencies, and health workforce development. His senior-level responsibilities included a focus on administration, management, and organisational and legislative development. Nakatani also participated actively in many international health initiatives. He was a member of the G8+Mexico Global Health Security Working Group and chaired the Chemical Events Working Group for 2 years. From 1988 to 1993, he was seconded to WHO in Geneva as a scientist in the Division of Development of Human Resources for Health. Nakatani received his MD from the Keio University School of Medicine in 1977 and his PhD from the Department of Hygiene and Public Health of Keio University in 2001. Assistant Director-General—Health Systems and Services Stepping back into an Assistant Director-General position after leading WHO as Acting Director-General for the 7 months before Chan's term began on Jan 4, Anders Nordström is now heading the third new cluster of Health Systems and Health Services. This new department will focus on scaling-up health services, financing, information systems and human resources, and will aim to “provide global technical leadership throughout WHO”. Nordström's first stint as an Assistant Director-General for General Management began in July 2003, when he was charged with making WHO a more effective and efficient organisation through strengthening internal processes, management, and accountability. However, his previous experience involves extensive field work. He graduated as a medical doctor from the Karolinska Institute in 1988 and took courses in political science and development studies at Stockholm University before taking a job with the Swedish Red Cross in Cambodia. Nordström also worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Iran and then for the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency for 12 years. He was the first person to take the helm of the newly created Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002, during which time he helped establish its basic structure and organisation. Assistant Director-General—General Management The job of Assistant Director-General for General Management was the role Nordström left to take up the Acting Director-General reins. Namita Pradhan comes to the role after involvement with WHO's operations and strategic planning as Director of Planning, Resource Coordination and Performance Monitoring. She has worked on introducing results-based management to the organisation and was involved in the development of the 11th General Programme of Work 2006–15 and budget programming, including strategies to improve resource mobilisation for WHO's activities. Pradhan started her career in the Indian Administrative in the late 1970s, including a period as Additional Commissioner for Family Welfare, in which she oversaw a World Bank-funded programme of health care and family planning in Mumbai. Other government appointments included positions in the ministries of women and child development and as Director of International Health in the Ministry of Health. After joining WHO's Indonesia country office in 1996, Pradhan worked on strengthening health systems before moving to the Geneva headquarters as an adviser first to Gro Harlem Brundtland and then to Lee Jong-wook. Assistant Director-General—Sustainable Development and Healthy Environments Susanne Weber-Mosdorf remains the Director-General's Representative on European Union affairs in addition to the sustainable development and environmental role she has held since last year. A former German civil servant, Weber-Mosdorf studied economics, legal sciences, and politics, as well as administrative and management sciences at the University of Konstanz, Germany, before working at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and studying further at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration in Paris. She has held several positions in government and industry across many sectors and disciplines in Germany including 4 years as Mayor of Kirchheim. Directly before joining WHO, she was Director-General of the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security in Berlin, which included responsibility for international issues including health and social policy. During this time, Weber-Mosdorf was also the head of the German delegation to the World Health Assembly and the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. Assistant Director-General—Health Technology and Pharmaceuticals Howard Zucker's unchanged portfolio includes anticounterfeiting efforts, intellectual property and health, access to medicines, applying technology to solve public-health problems, and traditional medicines. In addition to his Assistant Director-General role he is also Representative for the Director-General on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Public Health. Zucker came to WHO from the US government where he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services but before moving up the administrative ranks he gained a first degree and MD from McGill University and George Washington University School of Medicine, respectively. Zucker's clinical training was in paediatric anaesthesiology; he held the post of Assistant Professor at Yale University School of Medicine, and Associate Professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Adjunct Associate Professor at Cornell University Medical School and was also on the faculty at the National Institutes of Health. Zucker is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the USA, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a public health “high-level expert” for NATO. More continuity than changeMargaret Chan says she thought long and hard about who to appoint in her senior team. The authority granted to her by the World Health Assembly means she could have brought in an entirely new set of subordinates, if she had so wished. But, says Chan, after consulting widely on the campaign trail, “I did not hear a single member state telling me that they want major change”. The result is that many of Lee Jong-wook's close advisers and colleagues keep their roles, with only minor changes of responsibility. “The team of senior management brought in by Dr Lee has established networks and relationships…So now I would like to maintain the stability and continuity”, she says.In addition to the Assistant Director-General reappointments, Chan has also publicly confirmed the roles of four other high-level staff: Denis Aitken, formerly Lee Jong-wook's Chef de Cabinet, is now Representative of the Director-General for a new Partnerships and UN Reform programme; Bill Kean will continue as Executive Director of the Director-General's Office; Liu Peilong will continue as an Adviser to the Director-General; Andrey Pirogov will continue as Assistant Director-General of the WHO Office at the UN in New York; and finally, Ian Smith, one of Lee's close advisers, will continue as an Adviser to the Director-General. Margaret Chan says she thought long and hard about who to appoint in her senior team. The authority granted to her by the World Health Assembly means she could have brought in an entirely new set of subordinates, if she had so wished. But, says Chan, after consulting widely on the campaign trail, “I did not hear a single member state telling me that they want major change”. The result is that many of Lee Jong-wook's close advisers and colleagues keep their roles, with only minor changes of responsibility. “The team of senior management brought in by Dr Lee has established networks and relationships…So now I would like to maintain the stability and continuity”, she says. In addition to the Assistant Director-General reappointments, Chan has also publicly confirmed the roles of four other high-level staff: Denis Aitken, formerly Lee Jong-wook's Chef de Cabinet, is now Representative of the Director-General for a new Partnerships and UN Reform programme; Bill Kean will continue as Executive Director of the Director-General's Office; Liu Peilong will continue as an Adviser to the Director-General; Andrey Pirogov will continue as Assistant Director-General of the WHO Office at the UN in New York; and finally, Ian Smith, one of Lee's close advisers, will continue as an Adviser to the Director-General. Margaret Chan: now is the time for WHO to achieve resultsThese days, the job of WHO Director-General is as much about redefining the notion of health as it is about managing an international organisation. Gro Harlem Brundtland, who held office from 1998 to 2003, led this trend by framing health as an economic issue with her acclaimed Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. Her successor, Lee Jong-wook, promoted the view of health as a product of wide-ranging social determinants during his 3-year term. But Margaret Chan, who took office on Jan 4 this year, looks set to push through what could be the organisation's most important conceptual change. Full-Text PDF