Keynote speakers

Richard Osborne is a prolific public health researcher, educator and program implementer. His teams have developed and implemented evidence-based and practical tools and processes to make substantive impacts on health and equity, not only at the project level, but at the state, regional, national, and international levels. Osborne is a Distinguished Professor of Health Sciences and Director of the Centre for Global Health and Equity at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and holds appointments at Santé publique France, University of Copenhagen, and NOVA University Lisbon. He is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2018, 2021) as the top 1% most influential researchers globally, having published over 300 original scientific research papers. He advises the World Health Organization (WHO) and, with global partners, his team created WHO’s 2022 Health Literacy Development for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases four-volume report. Osborne attributes his team’s exceptional track record in innovation and subsequent impact of their tools and processes to authentic listening to diverse people with lived experience and the service providers in the field. This is reflected in the wide and repeated use of their tools by over 1000 teams, most notably the Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) used in over 80 countries.

Chris Trudeau is a law professor and plain-language advocate who has dedicated his professional life to making difficult information easy to understand for people from all walks of life. Trudeau is an Associate Professor at the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, having taught and lectured at many other universities and events. Trudeau’s research focuses on gathering empirical data that helps determine best practices for clearly explaining difficult health and legal topics. A self-described “health-literacy lawyer,” he is the first lawyer to be appointed to the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable of Health Literacy. Trudeau also has extensive experience working with clinical trials regulations. He has served on the FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee and served as the Director of Regulatory Knowledge & Support at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Ilona Kickbusch is a leading global health expert who has contributed to many innovations, policies and educational initiatives during her distinguished career. She was key instigator of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, WHOs Healthy Cities Network, WHO’s Health Behavior and School Children Survey, health literacy and Health in All Policies, and initiated the @wgh300 list of women leaders in global health. She has pioneered new approaches to leadership training in global health: she initiated the first executive training in Global Health Diplomacy and is program chair of the leaders in health network SCIANA at Salzburg Global, founded the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and has been heavily involved in building many others. Kickbush has received many prizes, honorary degrees recognitions, and awards, including the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) and the WHO Medal for contributions to global health. She continues to advise the WHO and works with EU presidencies on global health.

Karen Komondor, is a nationally recognized leader and expert in health literacy. As the Founder and President of Health Literacy 360 LLC, she provides training for health professionals and consumers and consultations to organizations on health literacy best practices. Her mission is to reduce communication barriers within the complex healthcare system and ease the burden on patients. For over 20 years, Karen served as the Director of Organizational Development and the Health Literacy Institute at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center, an urban teaching hospital in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, until its closure in November 2022. Throughout her career, Karen has conducted training sessions and delivered keynote speeches at numerous healthcare facilities and conferences at the local, state, and national levels. She has authored numerous articles and appeared as a guest speaker on radio programs and local TV stations. Additionally, she is a regular guest faculty member on health literacy at multiple universities. Karen previously chaired Healthy Cleveland’s Health Literacy Committee and is co-founder and past president of Ohio Health Literacy Partners, a statewide non-profit collaborative dedicated to empowering Ohioans to make informed health choices. Most recently, she chairs the National Council to Improve Patient Safety through Health Literacy.

Dr Faten Ben Abdelaziz is Head of the Enhanced Wellbeing Unit in the Department of Health Promotion at the World Health Organization Headquarters, providing technical support to WHO Member States in policies and programmes development in areas of health promotion. She oversees the work on good governance for health and well-being societies, including healthy cities, health promoting schools, health literacy and community engagement.
Her current work focus is on intersectoral governance and policies that promote well-being of societies, promoting population levels health literacy, community empowerment, urban governance for health and well-being and health promoting schools.
Dr Ben Abdelaziz has previously served at the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean region (EMRO) as Regional Adviser for Health Education and Promotion and Coordinator of Health promotion in the Department of Prevention of Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). At the WHO Centre for Health Development in Kobe, Japan, she served as Technical Officer for Health Promotion, Urbanization and health, Health equity, Women’s health and Gender, and Social Determinants of Health.

Vicky is Social Impact Director at Haleon. She is passionate about driving forward Haleon’s mission of delivering better everyday health with humanity. She launched Haleon’s Social Impact strategy which is single mindedly focused on Health Inclusivity, and how barriers to health inclusivity, such as low health literacy, can be tackled to help inform and empower healthy living and healthy behaviours. She supports the business on embedding inclusivity across key brands, products and services and worked together with the Economist Impact team to launch the Health Inclusivity Index. Before joining Haleon, Vicky led the global Social Impact team at Kingfisher PLC and prior to that lead the corporate partnerships team at UNICEF UK where she worked with business such as EasyJet, Unilever and Marks and Spencer to deliver funding and developing child rights programmes.

Lee Hibbard is currently working in the Human Rights and Biomedicine Division of the Council of Europe. His responsibilities include AI and healthcare, Youth Forum on Bioethics, and a Guide to health literacy for equitable access to healthcare. Lee served as the Council of Europe's internet governance coordinator, responsible for strategic thinking, public speaking, relationship building, and coordination on human rights and technology. This included the development of internet governance strategies and partnerships with digital companies.

Professor Levin-Zamir is Director of the National Department of Health Education and Promotion of Clalit, Israel's largest health service organization, and Associate Professor of Health Promotion in the School of Public Health in University of Haifa Diane teaches at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities' Schools of Public Health as well. Diane is a summa cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Boston, and earned a MPH and PhD from the Braun School of Public Health of Hadassah Hospital and Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine in Jerusalem.
Diane specializes in action research in health promotion in community primary care, hospital and media settings, in media health literacy, measuring health literacy, and was the principal investigator of the Israel National Health Literacy Survey and is Research Co-Chair for the WHO Action Network on Measuring Population and Organizational health Literacy (M-POHL). Diane has fulfilled a number of leadership roles in International Union of Health Education and Promotion, is founder of the IUHPE Global Working Group on Health Literacy, and is Associate Editor of the Global Health Promotion Journal, IUHPE's flagship journal. Diane is the appointed Chair of the WHO Europe Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral and Cultural Insights.
She has specialized in health promotion among special groups: children and adolescents, elderly, people with chronic conditions, and health promotion in multi-cultural settings. She is active in promoting comprehensive and sustainable health promotion implementation on local, national, international and global levels. Diane has extensively published research on various aspects of health literacy, health promotion and cultural appropriateness. She is active in promoting Health Promoting Hospitals in Israel and internationally, and is one of the founding members of the Israel Association of Health Promoters and Educators and the appointed chair of the National Council for Health Promotion of the Israel Ministry of Health.

Virginia Visconde Brasil is Senior Professor at the Faculty of Nursing at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil. She holds a PhD and Master's Degree in Nursing at the University of São Paulo. She is a Coordinator and founding member of the Brazilian Health Literacy Network (REBRALS).

Professor Wang Ying Wei is the director of the Centre for Palliative Care and medical consultant in Hualien Tzuchi Hospital. He received his MD degree from Taiwan University and PhD from Tulane University in US. He completed his residency training in Family Medicine in Taiwan University Hospital. He was the former Director General in Health Promotion Administration MOHW, the chief in Heart Lotus Hospice in Tzuchi General Hospital, and director in the Department of Medical Humanities, Tzuchi University. He started the first Buddhist hospice programme in East Taiwan since 1996. He is a council member of APHN. He developed many innovative programs for geriatric care, palliative care and medical humanities in Chinese Taipei in the past few years. His specialty included palliative care, geriatric care, medical education, and health promotion.

Faculty of Public Health, Khon Kaen University,
Khon Kaen, Thailand
Doctor of Philosophy

As President & CEO, Catina O'Leary, PhD, MSW oversees Health Literacy Media’s core activities and programs to set and maintain the strategic vision for the organization. Her primary focus has been on building sustainable health literacy programming to address systemic challenges in the delivery of health care and clinical research, and making health and science information accessible and meaningful to the people who need it most. Her reach extends far beyond the team and work she leads at HLM.

As a pharmacologist and Chartered Accountant Gerardine is an international interdisciplinary researcher, bringing the disciplines of medicine and business together with a particular focus on measurement in health care, specifically the measurement of health literacy and the measurement of value. Gerardine has been Principal Investigator in the conduct of large inter-disciplinary EU funded comparative research projects addressing global health challenges including health literacy, diabetes literacy, childhood obesity and the measurement of value in the care of people with dementia, children with cystic fibrosis and women with preeclampsia. She was a co-founder and Principal Investigator within the UCD Applied Research in Connected Health Technology Centre. As a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School Gerardine has led a comparative study of the care of children with cystic fibrosis across Boston and Dublin and is currently engaged in a US/Ireland comparative study concerning worker wellbeing in the health sector. Gerardine has served as co-chair of the UCD university strategic theme ‘Building a Healthy World’ and represents UCD within Una Europa on the theme ‘One Health’. Gerardine recently served a five year term as Director of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and Associate Dean of the UCD College of Business, 2018-2023.

Tiberius Pereira is a co-founder of Patient Safety Ireland (PFPSI), formed 11 years ago under a World Health Organisation programme. As defined by the WHO, PFPSI aims to engage and empower patients and families to be active partners and advocates in their own care. PFPSI members work in partnership and collaboration with health professionals and policy-makers to make health services safer in Ireland and enable the patient voice to be heard fully https://www.who.int/initiatives/patients-for-patient-safety).