SPEAKERS
Conference brings together interesting and motivating group of speakers from the field of research, advocacy and governmental institutions. We have asked them to introduce themselves. Here they are!
Florence Berteletti
Florence Berteletti is the Director of the Smoke Free Partnership (SFP), a Belgian Foundation committed to bringing about change to national and EU policy that impacts on the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention in Tobacco Control. Florence was appointed as SFP Director in 2009 in recognition of her strong leadership and diplomatic skills within the European Institutions. Her experience in high-level and strategic meetings includes representation on the EU Health Policy Forum, the Civil Society Contact Group, the European Public Health Alliance (as Vice President till 2011). In addition, Florence Berteletti Kemp represents SFP on the Coalition for Health, Ethics and Society1 (CHES) and, in her personal capacity, she is a member of DG SANCO Stakeholder’s Dialogue Group2. Having received university education in the United Kingdom Florence speaks English and French fluently.
In the past 5 years, Ms. Berteletti Kemp mainly worked on policies related to tobacco control and non-communicable diseases in the European Union and at international level. Her work involves leading the development of political strategies to ensure the implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), and in particular FCTC Art 11 & 13 (packaging, labeling and advertising of tobacco products), FCTC Art 6 (Tobacco Tax Directive and measures related to the price and affordability of tobacco), FCTC Art 5.3 (tobacco industry interference in tobacco control policy) and FCTC Art 8 (smoke free policies). Her work also involves leading and coordinating major pan-European projects, including TobTaxy, a capacity building project which ran from September 2010 to November 2012. Ms. Berteletti’s responsibilities also include coordinating SFP’s research on second hand smoke, tobacco advertising and tobacco industry interference.
Alise Krumina
Alise Krumina is a public health specialist and she is passionate about what she is doing. She has started her career as a health promotion methodologist in public institution. From the very first beginning her work has been directly related to tobacco and alcohol control issues. She has spent much time on learning to advocate for evidence- based tobacco and alcohol control policy. At the moment she works as an expert of addiction surveillance in the Ministry of Health, where her main responsibilities are tobacco and alcohol control policy development and implementation.
Stig-Erik Sørheim
Stig Erik Sørheim is Head of the International Department at Actis – Norwegian Policy Network on Alcohol and Drugs and President of EURAD (Europe for Action on Drugs).Stig Erik earned his Cand. Philol. degree at theUniversityof Oslo. He spent nine years with the Norwegian Directorate for Health as a senior adviser in alcohol and drug policy, public health and health in equalities.He is also on the board of the European Alcohol Policy Alliance and the Nordic Alcohol and Drug Policy Network.
Lauri Beekmann
Lauri Beekmann is the Secretary General of NordAN and has been the chairman and executive director of the Estonian Temperance Union (ETU) since 2003.
With a background in journalism, he has worked as a radio editor for 10 years and as an editor of different local magazines and portals. In 2007 he started an alcohol news blog and weekly alcohol-related newsletter – http://alcoholweekly.blogspot.com/. He is also the editor of bimonthly newsletter for the European FASD Alliance network and is currently vice-president of the European Alcohol Policy Alliance (Eurocare) and board member of the Baltic Tobacco and Alcohol Control Coalition (BTACC).
Johan Damgaard Jensen
Johan Damgaard Jensen is director of the Danish NGO Alcohol and Society and has for the latest 17 years been working with prevention of harm done by alcohol on national level. He has a masters degree in agricultural science and been working in the fields of financing and insurance. Later been the head of member based NGO's. Johan Damgaard Jensen has been a board member of the European Alcohol Policy Network and board member of the Nordic Alcohol and Drug Policy Network.
Aelita Vagale
Aelita Vagale is working at the Riga Stradins University in the Faculty of Rehabilitation as well as RSU Department of Communications Head of the Psychology programs head. Dr Vagale works as clinical psychologist at the Rehabilitation center for addicted „Akrona 12”. She has been the director of the Riga City Council Addiction prevention center.
Irma Kilim
Irma Kilim works as European Officer for IOGT-NTO Sweden, where her main areas are alcohol policy and alcohol marketing, but she is also involved in national campaigns. Irma has previously worked as Political Assistant for the Swedish Sobriety movement and was at the time stationed in Brussels. She began her career as a teacher and holds a Bachelor degree from Jönköping University in History and English.
Jona Hansen
Jóna Hansen is a board member of the Blue Cross in the Faroe Islands. She is working as at teacher in a primary school where she is teaching classes and students with special challenges.
Edison Manrique Garcia
Edison is a MD and PhD. Edison’s research interests are mental health and substance abuse. His filed of expertise is the association between cannabis use and schizophrenia. He is currently working as a managing editor of the European Journal of Public Health.
Elisabeth Fjellvang Kristoffersen
Elisabeth is Acting Secretary General of “MA – Norwegian Abstaining Motorists Association”. Among other projects, she is leading the Norwegian part of the “Nordic Roadside Drug Testing” project. Elisabeth has previously worked in tourism development and holds a Bachelor degree in business administration, tourism, community planning and marketing.
MA was founded in 1928 as a membership motorist’s organization, and has since been a champion for traffic safety, in particular alcohol- and drug-free traffic. The last decade MA has advocated the use of alcohol interlocks in all vehicles, and set focus on preventing intoxication of medication and illegal drugs when driving.
Nick Sheron
Nick Sheron is an academic clinical hepatologist at University of Southampton and runs the liver unit at Southampton General Hospital. He is also actively involved in a clinically based programme of research in various aspects of alcohol-related problems. Together with Ian Gilmore, President of the Royal College of Physicians, he co-founded the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, an umbrella body bring together 27 different organisations including Royal Colleges, NGOs and charities with the aim of lobbying for evidence-based policies to reduce alcohol-related harm in the UK. He is also a founder member of the European Union Alcohol Forum, a member of the European Union Alcohol Marketing Taskforce and two bodies of which have been set up by the European Commission in order to take forward the EU Alcohol Strategy.
Peter Allebeck
Peter Allebeck is professor of Social Medicine at the Department of Public Health Sciences KI, and also has a position at CES, Stockholm County Council. His main area of research is Mental Health and in particular epidemiology of alcohol and substance use. Since 1 January he has a half time position as Secretary General for FORTE, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare.
Marcis Trapencieris
Marcis Trapencieris is a susbtance use researcher at the institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia. Since 2003 he has been involved in setting-up and developing national drug monitoring system and its indicators at the Latvian National Focal Point. Furthermore he has extensive experience on substance use research in Latvia and beyond; lately he has involved in several large-scale European projects on substance use (e.g. ALICE-RAP, AMPHORA, SMART). He has been Principal Investigator for Latvia for the well-known ESPAD study and has extensive collaboration experience with the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in various areas of illicit drug monitoring. Among his research interests is youth, resilience, methodology development, problem drug use, alcohol harms, and analyses of big data. He has been a board member of the Research Committe on Deviance and Social Control of the Internation Sociological Association, member of the Kettil Bruun Society. He is also a founder of the Latvian Addiction Research Association, which aims to advocate for evidence and knowledge based susbtance use policies and interventions, as well as to promote high quality substance use research nationally. Currently in collaboration with the Latvian Association of Addiction Psychologists he is involved in developing a novel drug education project for school children in Latvia using new technologies.
Nijole Goštautaitė Midttun
Nijole Gostautaite Midttun is a psychiatrist and director of the nonprofit organization “Mental health initiative”. She is an active mental health advocate and her work involves research and analysis, training and organization development. She has clinical psychiatry experience in variety of settings in Lithuania and Norway, as well as additional background of health psychology and experience in developing social work programs in Lithuania. She has more than 15 years of training and teaching experience: some of the courses involve Counseling for Health, Team Work in Mental Health, and she has been teaching Health Advocacy in Vilnius University since 2009 in Erasmus Mundus program. Some of the recent projects involve development of the program for mentally ill persons “Parenting for health”, assessment of accessibility program for services for children using psychoactive substances, feasibility of mandatory treatment for dependent persons and alcohol advertisement monitoring. N.G. Midttun is closely involved in alcohol and tobacco control policy as a board member of the Lithuanian Coalition for Tobacco and Alcohol Control and has organized on behalf of NordAN the first seminar on Alcohol marketing monitoring in Vilnius in 2013.
Per Leimar
Per Leimar is Political Adviser on alcohol at the Swedish temperance organisation IOGT-NTO. He has formerly been working as alcohol policy expert at the Swedish State Alcohol Retail Monopoly since the mid-1990ies.
Kristiina Hannula
Kristiina Hannula works as director in EHYT Finnish Association for Substance Abuse Prevention. EHYT operates in the whole Finland and among the entire population to promote healthy ways of life. The work extends from children and young people to working-aged and pension-aged people. In addition to preventive work in alcohol, tobacco and drug-related issues, EHYT promotes a positive culture in digital games and gambling.
Kristiina has studied physical education (master degree), health education and management. She used to work as PE and health education teacher as well as headmaster before she came to the NGO`s world. Among other things Kristiina takes care of The Network of Actors in Preventive Substance Abuse Work in Finland. The network is an open union and there are 36 actors involved. EHYT coordinates the operation of the network and apply for allocated subsidies for the coordination work. So advocacy work has very important role of Kristiina´s work. She is a board member of the Nordic Alcohol and Drug Policy Network.
Tim Colehan
Tim is currently Assistant Director, Member and External Relations for IATA based in Geneva, Switzerland. He is responsible for policy analysis and development as well as working with airline members, regional airline associations and others to articulate and advocate the industry positions to governments and regulators.
He has been involved in IATA’s initiatives in response to the growing issue of unruly passengers including advocating for the revision of the Tokyo Convention 1963. He was part of the IATA delegation that attended the recent ICAO Diplomatic Conference that adopted the Montreal Protocol 2014.
Prior to joining Member and External Relations, Tim served as IATA Area Manager Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos based in Bangkok and prior to this he was Country Manager Gulf Area (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE) responsible for all aspects of IATA’s local operations and activities. Before joining IATA Tim was a General Manager with Servisair, one of the world’s largest independent ground service providers.
He holds a MSc. in Air Transport Management from Cranfield University.
Lars Olov Sjöström
Lars Olov Sjöström is MHFs (the Swedish Abstaining Motorists' Association) traffic safety manager. He is a PhD and has previously served as secretary of the commission of inquiry on alcolocks in Sweden, a mandate from the Minister of Communications in Sweden. Sjöström is also the Quality Manager in MHF International Traffic safety laboratory, where accredited tests of alcohol interlocks and beathalyzers according to international standards is performed. Lars Olov Sjöstrom has evaluated the trial with automatic alcohol test in the port of Gothenburg 2013, and is working with the project "Drug-free traffic in the Nordic countries", in collaboration with MA-Norway, forensic experts and the Nordic police authorities.