Vesna Kerstin Petrič

Dr Kerstin Vesna Petrič currently holds the position of Acting Director-General of the Directorate for Public Health at the Ministry of Health of Slovenia. She assumed this position following a successful sixteen-year engagement as Head of the Division for Health Promotion and Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases at the Directorate for Public Health at the Ministry of Health of Slovenia. From 1998 to 2004 she was the Head of Office for WHO relations at the Ministry of Health of Slovenia and acted as WHO Liaison Officer. She was a member of the WHO Standing Committee of the Regional Committee for Europe (SCRC) from 2016 to 2019. As Chair of the Sub-group on leadership of SCRC, she was in charge of the development of a document on the role and contribution of leadership in health policy and practice with examples of effective leadership in public health by the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The document was discussed at the 69th Regional Committee for Europe in 2019. As Chair of the Sub-group of SCRC on the strategic role of WHO Country Offices in the WHO European Region and WHO’s presence in the countries, she presented the report with an overview on how the WHO Regional Office for Europe has gradually strengthened the delivery of country-specific work in the WHO European Region at the 69th Regional Committee for Europe in 2019. During her career she has been, among others, Member of the WHO Regional Evaluation Group for the election of Regional Director; Member of the Board of the European Health Forum Gastein; Member of the Steering Group on Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Management of Non-Communicable Diseases at the European Commission; Member of the Committee for National Alcohol Policy and Action (CNAPA) at the European Commission; Member of the Management Board of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction; Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies; Deputy national health coordinator of Slovenia within the South-Eastern Europe Health Network (SEEHN); and Co-Chair of the Global Network of WHO national counterparts for implementing the Global Strategy to Reduce the Harmful Use of Alcohol. Furthermore, she has relevant national and international high-level coordination and communication experience as Chair of the Council of the National Institute for Public Health of Slovenia; Deputy Chair of the Council of the Slovenian Traffic Safety Agency; Member of the informal Expert Group on the role of the EU in Global Health; Main Coordinator and Member of the Scientific Committee for the preparation of the 7th European Alcohol Policy Conference; and Chair of the National Coordinating Group for the implementation of the National Diabetes Management Program 2010-2020. She was also Chair of EU coordination at the WHO during the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2008. Dr Kerstin Vesna Petrič has been the Slovenian National Counterpart for overall strategic cooperation with WHO since 2004. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Slovenian delegation to the most important sessions of WHO governing bodies (World Health Assembly; Executive Board, Regional Committee) and, in the capacity of leading expert, she has participated in the most important high-level events (United Nations High-Level Meetings and sessions of the United Nations General Assembly in New York; official visits of the WHO Regional Director to Slovenia; WHO ministerial conferences and other international high-level events such as in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2008; Moscow, Russia in 2010; Minsk, Belarus in 2015; Montevideo, Uruguay in 2017; Sitges, Spain in 2018, Tallinn, Estonia in 2018, etc.).