EPH Conference International Scientific Committee

The International Scientific Committee (ISC) is responsible for:

• Advising the EPH-EB on scientific matters of the conference;
• Scoring of all abstracts;
• Contributing to the scientific evaluation of the conference.

Members of the ISC are:

• key public health expert from every European country;
• representatives from the host country;
• representatives from the EUPHA sections;
• volunteers nominated by EUPHA members and partner organisations.

Members are nominated for a period of three years. Re-nomination is possible. The ISC has its annual meeting in November during the conference. The EPH Conference Executive Board appoints the chair of the ISC for the year of the conference, upon advice from the Local Support Committee.

Chair of the International Scientific Committee 2023 is Prof Regien Biesma-Blanco

Regien Biesma (BSN, MSc, MSc, PhD) is Associate Professor of Global Maternal and Child Health at the Global Health Unit, Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), Groningen, the Netherlands. She is an epidemiologist and public health specialist with a research focus on estimating and reducing the disparity gap in maternal, neonatal and child health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. She has a particular interest is global nutrition. Her work explores factors during (pre)pregnancy, birth outcomes, early child growth and health and disease later in life. At UMCG, she supervises PhD candidates, coordinates internships in social medicine and leads the advanced research master programme on Health Systems and Prevention. Before joining UMCG in 2018, she spent 11 years at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland where she lectured in Global Public Health and Epidemiology and worked on health systems and policy research in Africa and Asia. She was an invited expert for the World Health Organization expert consultation on maximising positive synergies between health systems and Global Health Initiatives. She is a research fellow at the Aletta School of Public Health, the Netherlands, member of the Working Group on International Nutrition in the Netherlands and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Lifecourse Nutrition Center, Agder University, Norway.

Members of the ISC 2023: