Mentor Moments

Don Nutbeam is the Executive Director of Sydney Health Partners and a Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney. Sydney Health Partners is a NHMRC accredited Research Translation Centre. Don Nutbeam’s career has spanned senior leadership positions in universities, government, and health services. He has also made sustained contributions to international organisations including WHO and the World Bank. He was formerly President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, UK; Provost of the University of Sydney; and Head of Public Health for the UK Government. He is a public health scientist with research interests in the social and behavioural determinants of health, and in the development and evaluation of public health interventions. His current research focusses on the development and testing of interventions to improve health literacy in different populations. Nutbeam was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to public health and higher education in the 2024 King’s Birthday Honours.

Dr. Gill Rowlands is an Emerita Professor of Primary Care at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests are the role of health literacy in health, the role of General Practice in addressing the problems faced by patients with lower health literacy, and the development of policy. She founded the Health Literacy UK group, and chairs the IUHPE Global Working Group on Health Literacy. She has over 80 peer-reviewed publications and six book chapters, and has co-edited two books.

Jane has been at  the forefront of developments in health promotion as a discipline over the last three decades through best selling textbooks which have been translated into five languages, extensive publications on the nature and scope of health promotion and latterly, health literacy,  and through several visiting lectureships and as Visiting Professor at Southeast University, Nanjing, China.  

She has  worked with regional and government agencies in several low-income countries to develop training for community health workers, to develop plans for sustainable behaviour change approaches in relation to paraffin safety, food growing, sanitation and physical activity and to investigate good practices and the transferability and scalability of innovation in public health. 

She has also acted as a facilitator and expert educator in numerous skills areas including social marketing and behaviour change communication and evidence informed practice.

She is also  founding member and advisor to PHIRST South Bank, an evaluation team funded by the National Institute of Health Research who are helping local governments to build an evidence base on successful and effective public health interventions. Recent work includes process evaluations of public health strategies on serious youth violence and gambling and the design of smoking, exercise referral and alcohol offending services.

Dr. Kristine Sørensen is a highly-cited, award-winning, thought leader in the field of health literacy. Kristine Sørensen is the Founder of the Global Health Literacy Academy, Executive Chair of Health Literacy Europe and the International Health Literacy Association of which she was the first president.2016-2024. As an executive advisor she empowers leaders to improve health literacy by design. She has an educational background in public health science and works with governments, industry, academia and civic society to develop health literacy for all.

Prof. Louise Potvin is professor of health promotion at the School of Public Health, Université de Montréal and the Scientific Director of the Centre de recherche en santé publique. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Community Approaches and Health Inequalities. She completed a Bachelor in Psychology, a Master in Psychology and a Doctorate in Community Health. She is known as a founder and pioneer of Population Health Intervention Research, a domain of research that seeks to develop a cumulative body of knowledge on public health interventions, their planning, implementation, scaling up and sustainability. She is also a leading figure in health promotion research, more specifically through her work on the role of local environments in health inequality and how local intersectoral action transforms neighbourhoods. She published more than 350 research articles, commentaries, editorials and book chapters. She edited 11 books among which the two volumes of the Global Handbook of Health Promotion Research. From 2014-2023, she was the Editor in Chief of the Canadian Journal of Public Health. She is a member of the Canadian Public Health Association and of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education, for which she is the current Vice-President for Capacity Building, Training and Education. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She received the 2017 Pierre-Dansereau Award from the Association canadienne française pour l’avancement des sciences (ACFAS), the 2019 Canadian Institute of Health Research – Institute of Public and Population Health, Trailblazer Award and the 2021 R.D. Defries Award from the Canadian Public Health Association for outstanding contributions in the field of public health.

Mary is the Founder Director of the African Institute for Health and Development (AIHD) and has worked in the field of health promotion for about 35 years. She has worked for Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Amref Health Africa, African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) and Population Council. She is the Acting Vice-President for the African Region for the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE). She serves on various international committees including Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS). She is a member of the Steering committee for NCDI Poverty Network. She chairs Chair of the NCD Alliance of Kenya. She has published on gender, NCDs, NTDs, child health, GBV, sexual and reproductive health, and poverty.  She is an Adjunct Faculty Member of Strathmore University, Nairobi. She holds a PhD (Social Anthropology), University of Cambridge, UK (1994) and a BA (Anthropology), University of Nairobi (1989).

Dr. Orkan Okan is professor of health literacy at the TUM School of Medicine and Health and the Department of Health and Sport Sciences at Technical University of Munich, Germany, and head of the WHO Collaborating Center for Health Literacy. Orkan has a background in education and public health. His research covers health literacy in society and in different settings, focusing on disease prevention, health promotion, health care, and digitalization. His interdisciplinary research has a particular focus on children, adolescents, and schools. He is currently involved in various national and international projects and advises and works with (non-)governmental organizations. He has edited several books on health literacy, including the International Handbook of Health Literacy. Orkan is president of the International Health Literacy Association, president of the EUPHA Health Literacy Section, co-chair of the IUHPE GWG on Health Literacy, and co-founder and co-chair of the Global Health Literacy Research Network.

Stephan Van den Broucke is professor of Health Psychology at the UC Louvain, Belgium. His research expertise includes public health psychology, health promotion, health literacy, patient education, accident prevention, and public health capacity building. He has supervised a large number of national and international research projects, over 20 PhD projects, and more than a hundred master thesis studies; authored over 150 scientific publications; and taught students and health professionals in Europe, North and Latin America, Africa and Asia. Prof. Van den Broucke has served as an evaluator for research projects submitted to the European Commission and to research foundations in Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and Québec, Canada. He participated in accreditation committees for training and research programs in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark, and gave policy advice to authoritative bodies on public health in Belgium, the European Commission, the Sultanate of Oman, and the Open Science Foundation, as well as the World Health Organisation and the European Food Safety Authority. He is an elected Board member of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE); Vice-President elect of the International Health Literacy Association; and member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Asian Health Literacy Association. He is also president of the HealthNest consortium for health literacy in Belgium.

Tanguy is a Senior Public Health Specialist with over 17 years of extensive expertise in health promotion, health program management, and health system strengthening. He has strong experience in coordinating scientific meetings, training, and research departments. Tanguy previously worked at the Ministry of Defense, specifically at the National Military Teaching Hospital, where he led the Center of Excellence in Paediatric AIDS Global Care. He currently serves as Senior Technical Advisor to the Director General of the Hospital for health information and strategic innovation.

As the coordinator of international conference reporting for the Society for AIDS in Africa for over ten years, he developed several innovative tools for conference reporting

Tanguy has a multidisciplinary background in medical and social sciences, public health, health promotion, health communication, and environmental management. He is currently a PhD candidate in Environmental Management and has completed over 300 certificates in various fields, including community health, health in all policies, cluster coordination, advocacy, health impact assessment, emergency preparedness/response, infodemic management, and research ethics. He is fluent in both French and English and possesses multifaceted skills that make him an asset to any organization.

As an activist with more than 20 years of experience in public policy analysis, social inequality assessment, and the fight against social exclusion, Tanguy is dedicated to impactful and sustainable health interventions. He is particularly passionate about the social determinants of health, health inequalities, and climate change.

Tara is a PhD Candidate studying nature-based social prescribing in the Faculty of Environment (GoHeLP Lab) at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She identifies as a young public health professional working to strengthen health systems with a vision that “everything & everywhere is public health”. Her public health trajectory has taken her across the globe from the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Tara is also a strong advocate for amplifying young voices in dialogue, research and practice.