WGH Norway Team

Goodwill Ambassadors

Goodwill Ambassadors are well-known personalities or authoritative experts from a variety of fields who commit to contribute and advocate for a specific cause or issue. WGH Norway has selected individuals in an effort to raise awareness of important issues and solutions related to the network's mission: To ensure enabling environments for gender parity as well as greater progress in achieving the SDGs and better health for all genders. As Goodwill Ambassadors, these individuals will volunteer their time to mobilize support and shine a spotlight on the WGH movement, helping the Norwegian chapter reach its goals and to ensure a world that values women as leaders in global health and as catalysts for better health for all. 

Cathrine Lofthus

Cathrine M. Lofthus is the Secretary General at the Ministry of Health and Care Services since June 2021. For almost seven years, she was CEO at the Norwegian South East Regional Health Authority, the owner of the hospitals in South-Eastern Norway with approximately 80,000 employees. She has also been Deputy CEO and Chief Medical Officer at Oslo University Hospital, and held several leading positions at Aker University Hospital. Lofthus is a qualified doctor from the University of Oslo, where she also completed her PhD degree in endocrinology and epidemiology. She also holds qualifications in economy, administration and leadership, and has broad experience from the health sector as a clinician, researcher and leader. Furthermore, Lofthus has held board positions at e.g. Norwegian Healthnet, Oslo Science City and Oslo Cancer Cluster, in addition of being member of the National Council of e-Health and the National Council for Priority Setting in Health Care. At present, she is a member of the Standing Committee of the Regional Committee (SCRC), a subcommittee of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. 

Interests: Equity in health, Quality Assurance and Patient Safety, Governance, Innovation and Global Health

Skills: Leadership, Strategic planning, Governance, Change Management and Research 

Competencies: Medical Doctor, PhD, Lecturer, Supervisor, Project manager and CEO
 

Anna Stavdal

Anna Stavdal is a family medicine specialist and associate professor at the
University of Oslo, teaching undergraduate students and training family medicine residents. She is active in public debate, as a columnist and an experienced speaker passionate and advocating for primary care and family medicine. She has held leading positions in family medicine organizations for 25 years, at the Norwegian, Nordic, European and now global level. Since November 2021, she is the President of the World Organisation of Family Doctors (WONCA). A main field of professional interest for her is the “Core Values” of family medicine, a prerequisite for sustainable healthcare.

Interests: Integration of Primary Care and Public Health, Equity in health, Value
based medicine

Skills: Leadership, Advocacy, Strategic planning

Competencies: Clinician, Educator, Mentoring, Project manager

Tore Godal

Tore Godal is a Norwegian immunologist and one of the most influential health physicians of all time. Godal is a medical doctor and holds a PhD from the University of Oslo. In 1970 he moved to Ethiopia to conduct research on leprosy at the newly established Armauer Hansen Research Institute. From 1974 he was head of the immunology laboratory at the Norwegian Radium Hospital. He was chairman of the World Health Organization (WHO) steering group for research in leprosy immunology from 1975 to 1980 and tuberculosis immunology from 1983. In 1986, he became WHO Director-General of the program devoted to research and teaching in tropical diseases.

He was one of the initiators of the creation of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in 1999 and served as its chair for six years. He has been special advisor to Gro Harlem Brundtland at WHO and has worked at the Prime Minister's Office and as special advisor for global health at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2018, he has worked at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Godal received the King's Medal of Merit in 2019.

Advisory Group

The Advisory Group (AG) for WGH Norway assists the Secretariat in its ambitions to empower women in global health in Norway. The AG will provide advice and suggestions to advance WGH Norway, ensuring processes supporting effective achievement of the WGH Norway's vision and mission. The AG members are serving in their personal capacity and have been chosen to reflect a variety of backgrounds (academia, public and private sectors, NGOs and IO sectors), a varied geographical base nationally, and  representation of junior, middle and senior levels. 

Afternoon Tea Conversations

Want to get to know the Advisory Group? Enjoy a series of interviews with some of the Advisory Group members including our Goodwill Ambassadors to find out more about their personal journey and why WGH is so important to them!

View the Afternoon Tea Conversations

Anita Moe Larsen

Anita Moe Larsen has a degree in market communication, certified LeanSixSigma GreenBelt, and accredited in process and project management. She has honed experience from small and large companies within different industries and worked in several parts of the world. Anita has been Head of Communications at Norway Health Tech for more than 5 years and works as head communication resource in all major projects and has project lead on others. She is enthusiastic and dedicated to contributing to a strong and innovative health service and industry.

Anne Bergh

Anne Bergh has a varied background from international collaboration, development and public health, including working 10 years for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in Oslo and Geneva. Since 2007, Bergh has held positions in global health and migration issues at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and is currently leading the Institute’s Global Health Cluster. Bergh is a member of the Board for the Centre for Global Health at the University of Oslo. She holds an MA (Cand.Phil) in history of religion from the University in Oslo and has senior executive training from the Norwegian Defence University College.

Bente Mikkelsen

Bente Mikkelsen is the Director of Noncommunicable Diseases in the division of UHC/Communicable and Noncommunicable diseases at the World Health Organization Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. She was formerly the Director of the Division of Noncommunicable Diseases and Promoting Health through the Life-course at the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (Copenhagen, Denmark), Head of Secretariat for the Global Coordination Mechanism on the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases (WHO GCM/NCD) at the World Health Organization Headquarters (Geneva, Switzerland) from its inception in 2014 as well as a former CEO of the Southern and Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority. Dr Mikkelsen is trained as a gynecologist and obstetrician and holds a master’s degree in Health Administration and Management from the University of Oslo. Her current focus is on achieving the SDGs through the reduction of premature deaths from NCDs in the context of WHO General Programme of Work, and working across sectors with multi-stakeholders, within and beyond the health sector using innovation, implementation research, health literacy and new technologies.

Candela Iglesias Chiesa

Candela Iglesias Chiesa is the founder of Alanda Health, which provides public health expertise and research support to organizations working in global health, humanitarian and social development spheres. GHA works, for example, with the Red Cross supporting community health, epidemiology and infectious diseases projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. GHA has also worked with UNICEF and PAHO-WHO developing health policies and indicators in maternal, child and adolescent health. GHA is also providing COVID-19 evidence based communication to the public and Candela is leading the WGH Norway COVID-19 Taskforce. Dr. Iglesias is the author of “Build Your Dream Team. Leadership based in a passion for people,” and the founder of Sekkan Leadership, a platform helping people from nonmanagerial careers, particularly in the sciences and health fields, to become stronger leaders. She gives talks and workshops on leadership, team building and career change and mentors people in these areas. Candela is trained as a biomedical scientist, doing her masters and PhD at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She then pivoted into global health doing a Master’s in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Born in Argentina, she grew up in Mexico and the US and has lived in France and South Africa, before moving to Norway in 2015.

Elodie Besnier

Dr Elodie Besnier, PhD is a global health researcher at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at NTNU. She has a PhD from the NTNU department of Sociology and Political Science’s  Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN), which focused on women’s empowering strategies and interventions addressing health inequalities in children in low- and middle-income countries. Before joining NTNU, Elodie worked in the policy and advocacy sector for public health and health non-profit organizations across Europe.

Eva Gerdts

Eva Gerdts, M.D., Ph.D. is full Professor of Cardiology at the University of Bergen, and director of the Center for Research on Cardiac Disease in Women. She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Her research focuses on hypertension and heart disease in women. Her international collaborations have involved research in Africa, North and South America and Europe. Currently, her most important collaborators are Professor Giovanni de Simone, Naples (hypertension), Italy, and Vera Regitz-Zagrosek, Berlin, Germany (sex differences). She has published more than 250 research papers, one book and several book chapters. She is a fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and of the American Heart Association.

Eva Turk

Eva Turk, PhD, MBA desires to find and implement safe and sustainable healthcare delivery models globally through co-creation and smart technologies and digital solutions. Eva is responsible for the Inclusive Digital Community Care program at the Centre for Digital Health and Social Innovation at UAS St.Pölten, Austria and an associate professor at the University of South- Eastern Norway. Her research has been focused on person centered care, digital health, patient safety, HTA and quality of life. She teaches Public Health at the Medical Faculty, University in Maribor and is Public Health delegate - Emergency Response Unit with the Norwegian Red Cross. She was a WGH Norway COVID-19 Taskforce member and is a co-founder of the WGH Austria chapter. 

Originally from Slovenia, she has studied, lived and worked in Austria, Japan, Finland, Spain, Argentina, Syria and Norway. She believes that knowledge transfer, capacity building, motivation and empowerment through education represent a cornerstone for improving society, therefore, she founded SanAstra Foundation, dedicated to improving digital health literacy. 

Ingvild Hersoug Nedberg

Ingvild Hersoug Nedberg is an associate professor in the department of midwifery at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She is a certified midwife and has worked several years in Norway, Palestine and South Sudan. She went on to take a master of public health (MPH) at UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT). She defended her PhD-thesis in epidemiology and maternal health in 2022. The topic of her PhD includes caesarean sections in Georgia and Norway, and how maternal health care systems in these countries are organized. She has been actively engaged in the newly established national birth registry in Georgia. She is particularly interested in the role of midwives and how to make them an integral part of the health care system, which again can reduce unnecessary interventions in maternal health care and reduce maternal and newborn mortality and morbidity.

Ingvill Constanze Ødegaard

Prof. Dr. Ingvill Constanze Ødegaard (formerly Mochmann, née Ødegaard) is head of the Research Gateway EUROLAB at GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne, Germany and Professor II at Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo, Norway, where she is Partner in the ERC Consolidator Grant "EUROWarchild". She was appointed professor of International Politics at the Cologne Business School (CBS) in 2010 where she also served as Vice-president for Research and Knowledge Transfer from 2013-2018. Since 2019 she is a honorary professor at the CBS. She graduated in comparative politics, economics and German at the University of Bergen, Norway, and Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, Bonn, Germany, holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Giessen, Germany and a habilitation in social sciences at the University of Cologne, Germany. In 2013-2014 she was a fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) and from 2014-2020 an affiliated expert of HHI. She is founder of the "International Network for Interdisciplinary Research on Children Born of War" and managing director and chairwoman of the foundation "Children Born of War Project". Her research expertise includes amongst others interdisciplinary, international and intersectoral research in the field of democracy and minority rights, children born of war, and research methods. She is an active member of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and was appointed RDA Europe ambassador for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2019-2020.

Kari Nyheim Solbrække

Kari Nyheim Solbrække holds a Dr. polit in sociology and is professor at the Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo (UiO). A main part of her research focuses on the lived experiences of NCDs especially related to the gender. Solbrække is also involved in the global capacity-building program in Africa and Ethiopia SACCADE by phd supervising as well as teaching academic staff in Enhancing Gender in Science and Education. Her background includes various positions of trust such as Head of Board at the Centre for Gender Research at UiO, and President of the Norwegian Association for Gender Research.

Karine Nordstrand

Karine Nordstrand is a medical doctor and Public Health specialist with a Master’s degree in International Health. She works with infectious disease surveillance at the Norwegian Institute of Public health. From 2016 until 2022 she was the President of the Norwegian section of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). She went on her first mission with MSF in 2008, and has since worked with the organization in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Indonesia and Greece.

Marie Louise Sunde

Marie Louise Sunde is a medical doctor and holds a PhD in surgery. She is the Founder and CEO of Equality Check, a company that helps companies succeed with workplace equality by using data, domain knowledge and evidence based solutions to identify, understand and act to create real change.

Before founding Equality Check, Dr. Sunde was working as a senior surgical resident. As a surgeon, Sunde became well acquainted with the challenges women meet in male dominated workplaces. She was instrumental in the medical #MeToo movement, and is engaged in initiatives together with the Young Doctor Association in Norway to improve the leadership culture in hospitals to reduce harassment of any kind. Before this she Founded #HunSpanderer and co-authored  “Hvem Spanderer?”. She is also a member of the advisory board of Partnership for Change and is a sought after public speaker.

Mekdes Gebremariam 

Mekdes Gebremariam, MD, MPhil, MSc, PhD is currently a Senior Researcher at the Department of Nutrition, University of Oslo (UiO) and a Deputy Director of the Center of Global Health. After completing her PhD, she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Oslo Metropolitan University, University of California, Los Angeles and UiO. Her research focuses on the promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviors and the prevention of non-communicable diseases. Social inequalities in health is a central theme in her research. Gebremariam has coordinated and led several research projects including international interdisciplinary research projects. She is currently the Principal Investigator of a large interdisciplinary research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project aims to identify trends in the development of socioeconomic inequalities in body weight from birth to 14 years of age using a birth cohort study. It also explores mediators of socioeconomic inequalities in lifestyle behaviors and body weight among youth. She is a collaborator in a Horizon 2020 project involving nine countries, aimed at obesity prevention among youth. She also participates in different public health and capacity building projects in Ethiopia. She is a Management Committee Member from Norway for a COST Action Plan (Determinants of Physical Activity in Settings), which includes participants from 26 countries.

Noor Khan

Noor Khan is a senior Norwegian career diplomat and a practicing medical doctor. She has worked clinically at the University Hospital in Oslo, as well as at the Clinton Foundation in New York and the WHO in Geneva before joining the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in 2008. In addition to her medical training, Dr. Khan has a Masters of Public Health from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She recently returned to the MFA in Oslo after serving at the Norwegian Representative Office in Jerusalem where she was responsible for the UN portfolio, humanitarian and health issues. She has a particular focus on developing global health policy at the Ministry.

Victoria C. Simensen

Victoria C. Simensen is a medical doctor and specialist in oncology. She has more than ten years' experience in clinical medicine, primarily from Oslo University Hospital. She has worked with the National Advisory Unit for Late Term Effects after Cancer Treatment. Victoria has a passion for accelerating priorities on cancer control on the global agenda, which led her to collaborate with the WHO on overviews related to screening and HPV vaccination and on mapping cancer workforce.

In 2020, she obtained an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her thesis evolved around the implementation of Cancer Care Packages in Scandinavia. The timing of her degree spiraled her into efforts combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020, she has been part of several European clinical trial projects and primarily responsible for coordinating the dialogue on vaccine and therapeutics research amongst European networks through the Trial Coordination Board. She has been affiliated with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Department of Global Health and is now with the Department of Infection Control and Vaccines. She has a particular interest in reaching vulnerable populations to provide better tailored care, and on bridging initiatives in research and health.  
 

Team

Special Counselor	Andrea S. Winkler
Special Counselor	Jeanette H. Magnus
Youth Coordinator	Sneha Ohja
Secretariat
President	Ingeborg K. Haavardsson
Vice-President	Bernadette Nirmal Kumar
Communications Adviser (maternity leave)	Gabriella Rodriguez
Alumni
Youth Coordinator Alumni	Urusha Maharjan
Youth Coordinator Alumni	Laura Herget
WGH Norway Organization