EU Manifesto for Women’s Health Launch
Biographies: Healthy Women—Healthy Europe
10th October 2018, 10:30 am-12:30 pm, Room A3F383, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium.
Hosted by Ms. Deirdre Clune in partnership with the European Institute of Women’s Health (EIWH)
Ms. Deirdre Clune, MEP.
Member of Europe Parliament, Ireland
Deirdre Clune is a Member of the European Parliament for the constituency of Ireland South, having been elected in 2014. She is a full member of the Parliament’s Transport & Tourism committee, and a substitute on Employment & Social Affairs committee.
Deirdre graduated from University College Cork in 1980, with a B.E. in Civil Engineering. She completed a diploma in Management Engineering with Trinity College Dublin in 1983. She returned to UCC in 1996 to complete her HDip in Environmental Engineering. Deirdre went on to work with some of the leading engineering firms both here at home and overseas, including Delap & Waller, Roughton & Partners and Arup.
Deirdre is a former member of the Dail Eireann (1997-2002, 2007-2011) and Seanad Eireann (2011-2014). She was elected Lord Mayor of Cork City in 2005, in which time the City was designated as the European Capital of Culture. During her time in Leinster House, Deirdre was Deputy Spokesperson on Enterprise with the Special Responsibility for Innovation.
She was also the Fine Gael spokesperson on Environmental Information and Protection, and Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. Deirdre’s father, Peter Barry, was a Dáil Deputy for Cork constituencies between 1969 and 1997 and served as Tánaiste in 1987, Deputy Leader of Fine Gael between 1979 and 1987 and from 1989 to 1993. He was also a Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Environment, Transport & Power and Education.
Her Grandfather, Anthony Barry was a Dáil Deputy in the 1950’s and early 1960s. Deirdre became the third generation of her family to hold the mayoralty in Cork, following in the footsteps of her father, Peter who was Lord Mayor of Cork in 1970/71 and her late grandfather, Anthony who was Lord Mayor in 1960/61.
Dr. Isabel De La Mata
Principal Adviser for Health in the European Commission
Isabel de la Mata has been Principal Adviser for health in the European Commission since March 2008. Recently, her functions were upgraded to Principal Adviser for Health and Crisis management. Before this, she worked as Counsellor for Health and Consumer at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU, as Deputy Director General for Health Planning at the Spanish Ministry of Health, as Adviser to the Vice-minister of Health and several other posts at the Ministry of Health of Spain and the Regional Departments in the Basque Country and in Madrid.
She has worked with WHO, including as a member of the Standing Committee of the Regional Committee, Pan American Health Organisation, Inter-American Development Bank and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation. Dr de la Mata graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Basque Country in 1983 and holds post-graduate degrees from the University of Leuven and Paris VI in Public Health, Hospital Administration and Statistics. She is a specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.
Mrs. Julie Girling
Member of European Parliament, United Kingdom
Julie Girling was elected as Conservative Member of the European Parliament for South West England and Gibraltar in 2009 and successfully re- elected for a second term in 2014. She is currently sits on the Committees for Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and for Women’s Rights and Gender Equality.
She also sits on the Delegation for relations with South East Asia and has previously served as Chief Whip for the Conservatives in the European Parliament. Formerly a member of the European Conservatives & Reformists Group (ECR), she has recently moved to become a member of the European People’s Party Group (EPP), the Group the Conservatives in the European Parliament were members of until 2009 when the ECR Group was created.
During her time in the European Parliament she has worked on a number of important legislative files covering areas such as air quality, emissions, food safety, reform of the Common Agriculture and Fisheries Policies, biodiversity, chemicals and animal welfare. Mrs Girling has recently been rapporteur for both the ETS Phase IV and the Aviation ETS files.
Dr. Janusz Janczukowicz,
Board Member of the European Institute of Women’s Health, AMEE—an International Association for Medical Education and Medical University of Lodz-Poland Dr. Janusz Janczukowicz is the head of Centre for Medical Education and the chair of the Best Evidence Medical Education Collaborating Centre in Lodz.
His main professional interests include diversity and inclusiveness in health professions and higher education, inter professional education, teaching, learning and assessing medical and academic professionalism, social, and intercultural competence.
Janusz is a member of the International Association for Medical Education AMEE Executive Committee and leads the diversity-theme for the annual AMEE conferences. He is a member of the European Board of Medical Assessors, an auditor for the Association for Medical Schools in Europe, an external expert for the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education and a member of the Medical Teacher Editorial Board.
Furthermore, he is a member of the Higher Education Academy GTEA Strategy Group and leads the Translation into Practice Committee coordinating the Evidence Based Recommendations for Education – an initiative bringing the educational research results into the every-day health-professions teachers’ practice.
Ms. Peggy Maguire
Director General, European Institute of Women’s Health
Previously Director of Development at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin and Director of the Research and Education Foundation at the Irish College of General Practitioners. Peggy, a political scientist, has worked at EU and national level over the last twenty years highlighting the need for gender equity in biomedical. public health and social policy.
As Director General of the EIWH, she works with an expert Board and Advisors to the EIWH and co-ordinates a dedicated , highly skilled secretariat. In her EIWH role, she initiated the first online cancer information for and by women and worked with other health and patient NGOs to ensure gender and age became part of the EU public health programme.
As part of the DG Research Women and Science Unit Expert Group on Gender. Peggy contributed to the gender wording for the 6th Framework programme guides for applicants and evaluators. She has worked with the Commission External Advisory Group on ageing and disability and the WHO expert group on gender main streaming. Peggy has initiated and contributes to EU funded projects such as Engender-Inventory of good practices in Europe for promoting gender equity in health; Joint Action on Chronic Disease, Chrodis-JA; Engendering Research Ethics Committees(RECs) and EuGenMed, leading the research and the workshop on Sex and Gender in Healthcare Professional Education. Peggy contributes to the EIWH series of policy briefs on an ongoing basis and represents the EIWH at conferences and meetings.
She was a member of the expert group and contributed to the WHO Women’s Health Strategy for Europe. Currently, Peggy is a Board member of the Agency for Public Health Accreditation (APHEA). Peggy is a member of the EU Horizon 2020 advisory Group for the Societal Challenge 1 ‘Health, Demographic Change and Well-being, (H2020 AG SC1) and EU Horizon 2020 advisory Group, Gender and a member of the FRA, consultative NGO platform.
Ms. Leen Meulenbergs Director,
Strategic Partnerships, WHO/Europe, and WHO Representative, European Union (EU)
Ms Meulenbergs has led the work with partners and resource mobilization at WHO/Europe since 2011. From August 2016, she is also WHO Representative to the EU, coordinating WHO’s relations with EU institutions.
Before joining WHO/Europe, Ms Meulenbergs was head of the International Relations Department of the Belgian health ministry (the Federal Public Service Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment) and responsible for collaboration with WHO on health for Belgium’s presidencies of the Council of the European Union in 2001 and 2010.
Holding a master’s degree in psychology, Ms Meulenbergs has also worked as executive director of a WHO collaborating centre for health and psychosocial factors; managed various European projects, including one on Alzheimer’s disease; worked on post-traumatic stress disorder in the Great Lakes region in Africa; and was a member of the WHO Task Force on National Mental Health Assessment.
Dr. Anne Pépin
Senior Policy Officer, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation (RTD), Unit Science with and for Society, Gender Sector
Anne Pépin holds a B.Sc. in physics from the Université de Montréal (Québec, Canada), an Engineering Degree from the École supérieure d’électricité (France) and a Ph.D in physicselectronics from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (France). She was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) before being recruited by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1996. She was a warded the CNRS Bronze Medal for junior researchers in 2003 for her contribution to nanotechnology.
In 2006, Anne Pépin became a Scientific Advisor for the Mission for the Place of Women at CNRS (Mission pour la place des femmes au CNRS) – a strategic unit directly attached to the CNRS President and in charge of designing, coordinating and assessing all actions aimed at fostering gender equality within the organisation – where she initiated key partnerships within Europe, as well as with Canada and the USA.
Anne Pépin was appointed Director of the Mission for the Place of Women at CNRS in 2012. Among other activities, she has coordinated EU-funded project INTEGER (FP7, 2011-2015) which aimed at promoting institutional change for better gender equality in STEM research, and led to the adoption of a gender equality plan by CNRS in 2014, as well as the GENDER-NET project (FP7, 2013-2016), the first ERA-NET to be dedicated to gender equality and the integration of the gender dimension in research.
She also co-organised the 9th European Conference on Gender Equality in Higher Education held in Paris in 2016. Anne Pépin was made Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur in 2016. She is a former auditor of French IHEST (Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology), class Irène Joliot-Curie of 20162017. Since June 2017,
Anne Pépin has been on leave from her permanent position as senior researcher at CNRS to join the Gender Sector of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation as a Senior Policy Officer. She was Acting Head of the Gender Sector from February to June 2018.
Dr. Patricia Reilly
Deputy Head of Cabinet, Commissioner Tibor Navracsics (Education, Culture, Youth and Sport)
A veterinary surgeon and law graduate by background, Patricia Reilly worked in mixed clinical practice until 2001, when she joined the Irish Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. In 2004 she joined the Irish Embassy in Warsaw as Ireland’s first Agricultural Attaché to Poland, returning to a veterinary management position in Dublin in 2008.
Patricia was a member of the Cabinet of European Commissioner for Research and Innovation Máire Geoghegan-Quinn (2010-2014), and is now Deputy Head of Cabinet for Commissioner Tibor Navracsics (Education, Culture, Youth and Sport).
Ms. Kristin Semancik,
Public Health Manager, European Institute of Women’s Health
Kristin has been promoting gender equity in health with the EIWH since 2008. Kristin has worked extensively on sex/gender and health topics, including for the DG SANCO-funded ENGENDER and DG Research-funded EUGenMed Projects. In her role as Research and Policy Officer, Kristin is currently oversees the development of the EIWH’s policy brief series. Kristin is leading the Institute’s work for DG-SANTE-funded MyHealth Project (migrant health) and IMI-funded MOPEAD projects (Alzheimer’s Disease), specialising in communication and dissemination,
She has had experience in government, academia, industry, and non-profit sectors. She has affected healthcare change in both the US and Europe. Kristin has assisted uninsured and under insured individuals in the United States. Kristin has served as a policy analyst in the Irish Seanad. Kristin’s is currently completing her Ph.D. in political science at Trinity College Dublin exploring health policy and the EU.
She completed her undergraduate and Master’s degrees in political science and public health at Boston University. She has also researched and taught at university-level in Ireland, the United States and China.