Contributors

EurAfrican 2023

Ricardo Baptista Leite

CEO of I-DAIR and President of UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health, Portugal

  • Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the International Digital Health and AI Research Collaborative (I-DAIR), a Geneva-based organization striving to enable and improve access to inclusive, impactful and responsible research in the areas of Digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with focus on healthcare.
  • Member of the Portuguese National Parliament (2011- May 2023) for the Social Democratic Party Parliamentary (PSD).
  • Founder and President of UNITE Parliamentarians Network for Global Health, a global platform of current and former members of parliaments, congresses, and senates, present in more than 90 countries. UNITE is an official partner of the World Health Organization. 
  • Vice Chair of the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)’ (2nd term). By working directly with The World Bank Group and IMF, the Network aims to provide a platform for parliamentarians around the globe to advocate for increased accountability and transparency in International Financial Institutions and multilateral development financing. 
  • Global Ambassador of the ‘G20 Health & Development Partnership’ aimed at advising and advocating G20 countries on health policies aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 
  • Awarded by The Economist Intelligence Unit as a HCV Change Maker (2016). This acknowledgment, attributed to solely six people globally, came in due recognition of Ricardo’s academic work and policy leadership in the field of Hepatitis C. 
  • Guest Lecturer at NOVA Medical School (Infectious Diseases and Microbiology).
  • Chair of the Center for Global Health at NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS)
  • Former coordinator of the Sustainable Healthcare Unit at NOVA Information Management School.
  • Former Scientific Coordinator of Public Health at the Life Sciences Institute of the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP).
  • Senior Fellow at New Westminster College (BC, Canada) and PhD candidate in Public Health and Health Systems at Maastricht University (The Netherlands). Previous experience includes having been an elected member of the supervisory board of the National Genetic Database Protection Agency and a decade of experience in health technology as a medical consultant at Glintt Healthcare Solutions (2009-2016), a multinational software house. 
  • Mayoral Candidate to the municipality of Sintra (2021) and current opposition City Councilor of Sintra (2021-present). From 2015 to 2017, Deputy Mayor and City Councilor of Cascais, responsible for local health policy, academic partnerships, international relations (including economic diplomacy), youth (including Cascais European Youth Capital 2018) and employment policies. 
  • In the past, practicing physician for 7 years, including a 5-year Infectious Diseases residency program at the Western Lisbon Hospital Center, Coimbra Hospital Center and Amadora-Sintra Hospital. Intern in Public Health (HIV, Hepatitis and STI’s) at the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe, based in Copenhagen (2011). To support Portugal in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, returned to clinical practice as a volunteer medical doctor in the Cascais Hospital COVID Emergency Room, from March 2020 to May 2021. Most recently in July-August 2022 completed a volunteer mission as a medical volunteer at the Lviv Regional Clinical Hospital in Ukraine to support the humanitarian efforts during the ongoing war. 
  • Post-graduate studies in many universities in Europe and abroad, including Johns Hopkins University (MD, USA), Harvard Medical School (MA, USA), Harvard Kennedy School of Government/IESE (Madrid, Spain), Albert Einstein College of Medicine (NY, USA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) and AESE Business School (Lisbon, Portugal). 
  • Volunteer work related with health and development organizations, such as being member of the Center for Health and Development International Advisory Board (Mangalore, India), member of the board of the Hepatitis B and C Public Policy Association (Brussels, Belgium), member of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) External Advisory Board, among many other affiliations with Patient Associations. 
  • Alumni of the Millennium Fellowship at The Atlantic Council and of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Member of the European Leadership Network (www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org), European Young Leaders (Friends of Europe), Responsible Leaders Network (BMW Foundation), Emerging Leaders in Environmental and Energy Policy Network (ELEEP | The Atlantic Council), Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs). Fellow at the ZEIT Stiftung – Fundação Gertúlio Vargas 2015 Latin American Forum on Global Governance and member of the ZEIT Stiftung alumni. Member of the Antigua Forum alumni at Universidad Francisco Marroquín (Guatemala). 
  • Founder of CREATING HEALTH – Research and Innovation funding, a sustainable nonprofit which has been set up within the Católica University of Portugal to help capture funding for health innovation and research projects (http://creatinghealth.ics.lisboa.ucp.pt). 
  • Co-founder of the Estoril Conferences, which are focused on the issue of globalization under the motto Global Challenges, Local Answers (www.estorilconferences.com). 
  • Author of the book “A Road to the Cure – Proposals to fix the Portuguese Health System” (PT, 2020), Main author of the book “Citizenship for Health” (PT, 2015) and of the book “Strategic Consensus on Integrated Management of Hepatitis C in Portugal” (PT, 2014), among other publications. 
  • Media commentator on CMTV, the most watched cable news channel in Portugal, mainly on health and social issues.