Speakers
- Mr. Gaetan Lafortune
Gaetan Lafortune is a Senior Economist in the OECD Health Division. Over the past several years, Mr. Lafortune has acted as the coordinator and editor of the OECD publication "Health at a Glance", which presents international comparisons of the performance of health systems in terms of access, quality and spending. He has also carried out several studies on health workforce issues. He is one of the principal authors of the 2016 OECD publication entitled "Health Workforce Policies in OECD Countries: Right Jobs, Right Skills, Right Places". More recently, he was the lead author of the chapter on “Supporting Health Workforce Recovery and Resilience” in the 2023 OECD publication “Ready for the Next Crisis? Investing in Health System Resilience”.
- Dr. Joyce Fitzgerald
Dr. Joyce Fitzpatrick is a nurse educator and advocate for nursing, geriatrics, psychological care, and nursing theory. Born in 1944, she developed her interest in health care at an early age, and she had a great desire to learn and participate in nursing as an educator and leader to her peers. She continued to obtain higher degrees in nursing, including serving a year as Fulbright scholar. She has become best known for her new theory of nursing that involves lifetime health and care. Fitzpatrick began her nursing studies at Georgetown University with a BSN. She then secured her registered nurse license. From there, she obtained a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing at Ohio State University, going on to achieve a PhD from New York University. She then completed MBA from Case Western Reserve University to thoroughly understand the business and fundraising opportunities in health care. Currently, she sits in the Elizabeth Brooks Ford Professor of Nursing Chair at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University. She is a multi-published author with 395 articles in professional journals and over 65 books, including nursing teaching texts.
- Mr. Thomas London
Thomas works with a broad range of healthcare institutions in France and across Europe on improving their performance. Clients include state governments, healthcare regulators, public and private providers, payers, welfare operators, and biopharma, medical-device, and healthtech companies.Thomas has tackled issues as diverse as healthcare-system-level strategies, regional organization of health-service provisions, and provider-performance improvement. He also supports clients in defining global strategies and optimizing their organizations. Examples of Thomas’s recent client work include the following: supporting many healthcare providers across Europe and the Middle East in their efforts to evolve their strategies and improve performance; designing many national healthcare policies; helping healthcare payers improve their healthcare risk management; supporting biopharma and medical-device companies in strategy-development and performance-improvement efforts.Thomas was part of the Action Publique 2022 committee appointed by the French prime minister, is a board member (and former president) of Healthcare Data Institute, and regularly contributes to Institut Montaigne on healthcare-related topics.
- Dr. Milena Angelova
Milena Angelova, EESC Member and rapporteur of INT/979, Secretary-General of the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association.
Dr Milena Angelova has been serving as Secretary-General of the Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association since 2002 and as SGI Europe Vice-President since 2011. She’s been a Member of the European
Economic and Social Committee since 2007, EESC Vice-President in charge of Budget 2018-2020 and Employers’ Group Vice-President 2010-2018. Member of the Bulgarian Economic and Social Committee
since 2006 and is well known as an active participant in the policy– making processes in Bulgaria. In June 2022, Dr Angelova was appointed Bulgarian SME Envoy. Second mandate member of the Board of trustees of the Academy of Economics D.A.Tsenov. She has twenty-five years of successful track record in representing the interests of the business community at EU and national level regarding important topics such as SME promotion, boosting innovations and facilitating knowledge transfer, improving the business climate, combating the grey economy, the future of work, etc. She is a strong promoter of the nursing profession in all specialities and domain, clinical and policy, in the European health environment.