WHO Conference on Health and Climate 27 – 29 August, 2014

Technical Advisory Group

Professor Kalpana Balakrishnan Professor of Biophysics Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai (India)

Professor Balakrishnan is also Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and Director of the Centre for Advanced Research on Environmental Health, ICMR, Government of India.

Professor Balakrishnan’s primary research involvement has been in the area of exposure assessment and environmental . She directs a collaborative Masters of Public Health program between Sri Ramachandra University and University of California, Berkeley, the first such program in India.

She also serves as a Regional Editor for Environmental Health Perspectives, the official journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), USA and as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Public Health.

Professor Balakrishnan has received the Public Health Foundation of India award for Outstanding Scientist in Public Health, the Hari Om Ashram Trust Award for Outstanding Scientist (administered by the University Grants Commission, Government of India), the Outstanding Woman Scientist Award of the Government of Tamil Nadu and the Award for Excellence in Environmental Health Research administered by Harvard Medical International.

Dr. Balakrishnan obtained her undergraduate degree from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and her doctoral and postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University, USA. Dr. John Balbus Senior Advisor for Public Health to the Director National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (USA)

Dr. Balbus serves as a liaison between NIEHS and its external constituencies and leads NIEHS efforts on global environmental health and . In this capacity, he serves as the Department of Health and Human Services principal to the US Global Change Research Program and also co-chairs working groups on Climate Change and Human Health for the US Global Change Research Program and for the National Institutes of Health. He was a lead author on health for the US National Climate Assessment, and a Review Editor on Urban Areas for the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is currently leading an initiative on Sustainable and Climate Resilient Health Care Facilities as part of the US President’s Climate Action Plan.

Before joining NIEHS, Dr. Balbus was Chief Health Scientist for the non-governmental organization Environmental Defense Fund for seven years. He was also on the faculty of the George Washington University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Health Services, where he was founding Director of the Center for Risk Science and Public Health and Acting Chairman of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. He received his MD degree from the University of Pennsylvania, his MPH degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and his undergraduate degree in from Harvard University.

Professor Hae-Kwan Cheong Professor and Chair of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Suwon (Republic of Korea)

Professor Hae-Kwan Cheong is an environmental epidemiologist. His main area of research encompasses the effects of climate change on health, especially on infectious diseases; neurotoxicology of metals including manganese, lead, and mercury; epidemiology of neurodegenerative disorders; and various issues on environmental and occupational health. He is actively involved in the research on this issue with the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ministry of Environment. Previously Professor Hae-Kwan Cheong was chair of the Korean Society of Environmental Health and Toxicology, hosting body of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology 2010 in Seoul, Korea. Since 2009 he has been working as an expert consultant for the Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organization on a series of projects on climate change and health in vulnerable countries and has been working on climate change and health issues in Mongolia, Papua New Guinea and Cambodia. He is working on a report on climate change and health in Western Pacific countries. His work on these countries provided evidence on the effect of local and regional climate system on the health of vulnerable populations in these countries.

Professor Kristie Ebi Professor in the Department of Global Health (USA)

Professor Kristie Ebi conducts research on the impacts of and adaptation to climate change, including on extreme events, thermal stress, foodborne safety and security, waterborne diseases and vector borne diseases. She is Guest Professor at Umea University, Sweden, and Consulting Professor at Stanford University and George Washington University. Her work focuses on understanding sources of vulnerability and designing adaptation policies and measures to reduce the risks of climate change in a multi-stressor environment. She has worked on assessing vulnerability and implementing adaptation measures in Central America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the US. She is co-chair with Tom Kram (Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving, The Netherlands) of the International Committee on New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS), facilitating development of new climate change scenarios.

Dr. Ebi was Executive Director of the IPCC Working Group II Technical Support Unit from 2009 -2012. She was a coordinating lead author / lead author for the human health assessment for two US national assessments, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development. Dr. Ebi’s scientific training includes an MS in toxicology, a PhD and a Masters of Public Health in epidemiology, and postgraduate research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has edited fours books on aspects of climate change and published more than 150 papers.

Professor Antoine Flahault Professor of Public Health Université Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité (France)

Professor Flahault was the founding director of theFrench School of Public Health (EHESP, Rennes, 2007-2012). He is co-director of the Centre Virchow-Villermé for Public Health Paris-Berlin (Université Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité), co-director of the European Academic Global Health Alliance (EAGHA) and president of the Agency for Public Health Educatio Accreditation (APHEA).

Professor Flahault has conducted research in mathematical modeling of communicable diseases; has chaired the WHO collaborative center for electronic disease surveillance; has coordinated research on Chikungunya in Indian Ocean (Inserm Prize, 2006); and was scientific curator of a large exhibition Epidemik, la Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Paris, Rio and Sao Paulo). In January 2014, he was appointed Professor of Public Health at the School of Medicine, University of Geneva where he is the founding director of the Institute of Global Health. He was elected corresponding member at Académie Nationale de Médecine (Paris). As of January 2014, he had more than 235 scientific publications referenced in Medline.

Mr. Tore Godal Special Adviser Office of the Prime Minister (Norway)

Formerly with the World Health Organization (WHO), in 1973-74 Tore Godal was instrumental in initiating the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Bank and WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, leading the programme's pilot project effort, immunology of Leprosy, and from 1986 to 1998 leading the entire programme. In 1996 Mr Godal was principal organizer of Investing in Health Research and Development. He also launched the Roll Back Malaria programme and was previously

Executive Secretary of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). Professor Sir Andy Haines Chair Lancet Commission on Planetary Health (UK)

The Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, of which Professor Sir Andy Haines is Chair, is assessing the potential health impacts of a range of global environmental changes. Professor Haines was Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 2001- October 2010. He was previously Professor of Primary Health Care and Head of the Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences at University College London, and worked part-time as a general practitioner in North London for many years. Before that he was a consultant in epidemiology at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology and Medical Care Unit. He was also formerly Director of Research & Development at the National Health Service Executive, North Thames and a member of the Council and the Strategy Board of the Medical Research Council.

He is a trustee of UK Biobank and a number of other charitable bodies. He has worked internationally, including in Nepal and the USA. He chaired a Task Force on Health Systems Research for WHO which reported in 2005 and the Scientific Advisory Panel for the 2013 WHO World Health Report on Research for Universal Health Coverage. He coordinated the Lancet series on Energy and Health and on Climate Change Mitigation and Public Health in 2007 and 2009 respectively. He was a lead author of the health chapter for the 2nd and 3rd assessment exercises of the IPCC and is review editor for the health chapter in the 5th assessment.

Dr. Saleemul Huq Director International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) (Bangladesh)

ICCCAD runs regular short courses as well as an MSc in Climate Change and Development. Dr. Huq is also a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment & Development (IIED), where he is involved in building negotiating capacity and supporting the engagement of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in UNFCCC. Dr. Huq has published numerous articles in scientific and popular journals, was a lead author of the chapter on Adaptation and Sustainable Development in the 3rd assessment report of the IPCC, and was one of the coordinating lead authors of ‘Interrelationships between adaptation and mitigation’ in the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report (2007). Prior to this he was at Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies where he was in charge of management and strategy of the organization, which is the leading independent research and policy think tank in Bangladesh. Before that he taught plant sciences both to undergraduates and post-graduates at Dhaka University. In 2000 he became an Academic Visitor at the Huxley School of Environment at Imperial College in London, where he teaches a course on global environmental policies. He completed his BSc (Hons) in 1975 and his PhD in plant sciences in 1978, both at Imperial College, London.

Professor Anthony McMichael Professor Emeritus of Population Health Australian National University, Canberra (Australia)

Professor Anthony McMichael headed the research program on population health risks of climate change from 2001 to 2012 at the Australian National University. He was previously Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He is an elected member of the US National Academies of Science, and Honorary Professor of Climate Change and Health, University of Copenhagen. He has contributed substantively since 1993 to scientific assessments of health risks by the IPCC, and assists WHO on assessments of environmental-climatic risks to health. From 2009 to 2013 he chaired the WHO Tropical Diseases Research program assessment of how environmental changes, climate and agriculture influence the emergence of infectious diseases of poverty.

Professor Jonathan Patz Professor & Director of the Global Health Institute University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA)

Dr. Patz co-chaired the health expert panel of the first US National Assessment on Climate Change, served as a convening lead author for the UN/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and for over 15 years, served as a lead author for the IPCC. Dr. Patz wrote the first-ever resolution and convened a session on climate change for the American Public Health Association in 1994.

Dr. Patz has written over 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers, a textbook addressing the health effects of global environmental change, and a co-edited five-volume Encyclopedia of Environmental Health (2011). He organized the first climate change/health briefing to an Environmental Protection Agency administrator in 1997, and has been invited to brief both houses of Congress, and has served on several scientific committees of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2006 to 2010, Dr. Patz was Founding President of the International Association for Ecology and Health. In addition to being a contributor to IPCC’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Patz received an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows Award in 2005, shared the Zayed International Prize for the Environment in 2006, won a Romnes Faculty Fellow award in 2009, and a Fulbright Scholar award in 2014.

Nick Watts Convenor Global Climate and Health Alliance (Australia)

The Global Climate and Health Alliance brings together health bodies from around the world, united by a shared vision for a sustainable and healthy future. The Alliance works on a variety of activities, ranging from capacity building for health professionals through to engagement with the UNFCCC negotiation processes.

Nick also works as a research fellow for the University College London’s Institute for Global Health and as Head of Project for a forthcoming Lancet Commission. This brings together experts from around the world to investigate policy responses to climate change that promote public health and sustainable development.

His research interests include health system strengthening and reform processes; the application of complexity theory to development economics; and the protection and promotion of public health through sustainable development and climate change mitigation.