Professor Ilona Kickbusch is the Founder and Chair of the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
She is a member of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, the WHO Council on the Economic of Health for All, Council Chair to the World Health Summit in Berlin and vice-president of the European Health Forum Gastein. She has been involved in German G7 and G20 activities relating to global health and the global health initiatives of the German EU presidency in 2020 and most recently co-chaired the T7 2022 taskforce on global health.
She chaired the international advisory board for the development of the German global health strategy and advised on the establishment of the WHO Hub on Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. She works on a continuous basis with EU presidencies on global health and is advisor to the development of a revised European Global Health Strategy.
She publishes widely and serves on many other commissions and boards. She initiated the @wgh300 list of women leaders in global health. She is program chair of the leaders in health network SCIANA at Salzburg Global Seminar. She is co-chair of a Lancet FT Commission on "Governing health futures 2030: growing up in a digital world." She is honorary professor at the Charité, Berlin.
Professor Kickbusch has had a distinguished career with the World Health Organization. She was key instigator of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and WHOs Healthy Cities Network. She was the director of the Global Health Division at Yale University School of Public Health and responsible for the first Fulbright Programme on global health.
She has received many prizes and recognitions. She has been awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) and the WHO Medal for contributions to global health.