ADDRESSING VACCINE HESITANCY AND INCREASING UPTAKE IN EU
A MULTI-STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVE
28th January 2020
ASP 3H1, 16.00 -18.00
European Parliament, Brussels
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MEP Brando Benifei Brando Benifei is an Italian MEP who has served since 2014. He is one of the first members and the co-chair of the MEPs Interest Group “European Patients' Rights & Cross-Border Healthcare” During his first term from 2014 until 2019, Benifei served on the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. In 2019, he moved to the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. In addition, he is also a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Digital Agenda and the MEP Alliance for Mental Health. |
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Mariano Votta Public affairs professional and journalist, is the Director of Active Citizenship Network (CAN), the international branch of the Italian NGO Cittadinanzattiva, where he is responsible for European Affairs. Since 2013, he has been actively involved as ACN stepped up its advocacy activities at the European Institutions, which in 2015 led to the opening of a representative office in Brussels and – above all – to the launch of the MEP Interest Group “European Patients’ Rights & Cross-Border Healthcare”, promoted with the endorsement of almost 100 organizations across Europe. Download theWelcoming Address and the Final Remarks. |
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Hanna Nohynek She was instrumental in designing HPV vaccine introduction to the national immunization programme. Her research interests are register based vaccine impact studies, evidence based policy/decision making, vaccine safety, hesitancy, RSV, influenza, and pneumococcus. She belongs to the THL team of the Joint Action Vaccines (JAV), particularly the work packages on Hesitancy and Research and Development. She authored >130 original articles , teaches, guides elective,graduate, and PhD students. She has served on expert committees evaluating HBV, PCV, Rota virus vaccines in Finland, and as advisor to EU, IMI, IVI, WHO, GAVI, SIDA/SRC, Finnish MOFA. Download her presentation. |
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Francesco Gesualdo Francesco Gesualdo is a paediatrician and a researcher at the Bambino Children's Hospital IRCCS, Rome, Italy. In the past years, he has developed an experience in digital epidemiology, studying the use of Twitter for analysing flu epidemics and allergic diseases. He participated in the development of a platform exploiting different web sources for analysing vaccine confidence in Italy, he coordinated the Web Analytics Project for the WHO’s Vaccine Safety Net, and he is currently working in the European Joint Action for Vaccines, coordinating the development of an online platform dedicated to monitoring vaccine confidence on the web at the European level. Download his presentation. |
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Magdalena R. de Azero Executive Director Vaccines Europe, she has more than 20 years professional experience working on policies for the pharmaceutical and vaccine industries. She is responsible for developing and managing Vaccines Europe projects and is in charge of driving the vaccine industry EU policy priorities. She is a trained journalist that holds an MA in EU Affairs and also worked as a journalist in Spain prior to focusing on the EU pharmaceutical sector. Download her presentation |
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Silvia Romeo Silvia Romeo is currently working as Project Manager at ThinkYoung, a Brussels-based think tank focusing on young people. Further to a ThinkYoung’s research on the Youth Vaccine Perception, Silvia is currently managing a project to engage and inform young people about this significant public health issue. Moreover, Silvia is currently a member of the Coalition for Vaccination convened by the European Commission in March 2019 to bring together European associations of healthcare workers to commit to delivering accurate information to the public, combating myths and exchanging best practice. |
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Javier Diez-Domingo, MD, PhD Paediatrician from Valencia, Spain, at present director of the Vaccine Research Department of FISABIO and Professor of the Catholic University of Valencia. Principal Investigator in more than 50 clinical trials with vaccines, and also in epidemiological, outcomes research and pharmacoeconomic studies. Granted with over 7 European FP7 and H2020 grants, at present coordinating two of them. Very interested in the research ethics, has been member and secretary of different Ethics Committees of Valencia, and now president of the Ethics Committee of the Public Health Directorate of Valencia. He is also an external Expert of the European Medicines Agency. |
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Patrick Mahy Graduate from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), Patrick R Mahy was quickly interest in basic research in immunology/endocrinology and moved to UCLA (CA, USA) where he had a position and started a Ph.D., working on macrophages-osteoclasts, interleukins and BMPs. He worked at the CNRS (national center for scientific research) and since 2010, Patrick works for the Scientific Institute of Public Health (Sciensano), as the head of the expertise and customer relation unit. He was also involved with the IMI Advance project in which he invested and is now in charge of the follow-up program in VAC4EU as a founder and administrator. |
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John Kinsman He is an infectious disease social scientist, with extensive experience in sub-Saharan Africa and the European Union. He has authored or co-authored publications on a wide range of topics, including Antibiotic Resistance, Vaccine uptake, Public Health Emergency Preparedness Planning, and Health Systems. He currently works at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) as Expert, Social and Behaviour Change Communication, project managing and coordinating ECDC behavioural science and communication activities related to vaccine hesitancy. Download his presentation. |
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MEP Tomislav Sokol Tomislav Sokol is the Co-Chair of the MEPs Interest Group “European Patients' Rights & Cross-Border Healthcare”. He is currently serving as a Member of the European Parliament for the Croatian Democratic Union. He earned his PhD at the KU Leuven. He is part of the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. Before becoming a Member of the European Parliament, he had been a professor at the Zagreb School of Economics and Management. |
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Luciana Valente Always committed to health issues, since 2012 she has gained experience in the management of projects dedicated to social and health policies of the elderly as a member of the National Council of Senior Italy FederAnziani and collaborator of the publication of "SIC Health In Figures Compendium of updated data of the Italian Health". Today she is international relation manager of the SIHA association whose main mission is to give an influential senior voice in Europe and to drive senior and patient empowerment in Europe for promoting and maintaining health, preventing and managing disease. Download her presentation. |
