Advocacy Committee

As a member of the InterAmerican Heart Foundation, Beatriz is dedicated to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases or NCDs, heart diseases and stroke in the Americas.  She helped found her organization and was Executive Director from 1995 to 2017.  She continues her active engagement with a focus on advocacy.

Beatriz’s contributions include advocacy to promote and defend policies supporting good nutrition, physical activity, control of tobacco and alcohol. She organized and has led the Healthy Latin America Coalition (CLAS) that has more than 300 member organizations in the region and has been instrumental in presenting a coherent response from civil society to issues arising nationally and internationally. She advocates for salt reduction in the region as part of the “Scaling up Salt Reduction Consortium.”

In tobacco control she set up the first tobacco control virtual network in Latin America and a separate one in the Caribbean. She organized many capacity building workshops to promote effective tobacco control policies including smokefree environments and tobacco warning labels. She supported tobacco warning labels research in the Caribbean and Central America resulting in a compendium of tested well-tailored warning labels for this region. She organized 7 journalism contests and awards. In smoking cessation, Beatriz worked to implement WHO guidelines including supporting national planning, training and networking of health professionals. She was a Principal Investigator of the CARMELA study of CV risk factor prevalence in seven Latin American cities; and co-Principal Investigator of the NIH funded “From production to retailing:  policy-oriented research on tobacco economy in Argentina.”  Beatriz was president and main organizer of five Latin American and Caribbean Tobacco or Health Conferences that took place in Rio de Janeiro; Mexico City; Lima, Peru; San Jose, Costa Rica; and Montevideo, Uruguay. She also supported economic studies in Central America in preparation for tobacco taxation.

Her organization received the 2009 Luther L. Terry Awards for Exemplary Leadership in Tobacco Control. The CLAS coalition received the 2017 Sharjah Award for Excellence in NCD Civil Society Action for its initiative “Rapid Regional Response to Strengthen and Defend National NCD Policies”. More recently she received the 2018 WHO World No Tobacco Day Award.

She holds a Master of Science and Ph.D. from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a Bachelor of Science summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.  She was born and spend her formative years in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Prof. Monika Arora is a public health scientist working in the area of health promotion and health advocacy with focus on NCD prevention and control. She is the Director of the Health Promotion Division and Professor at Public Health Foundation of India. She is also Executive Director of Delhi based NGO: HRIDAY (Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth) in India. HRIDAY serves as the secretariat of Healthy India Alliance (India NCD Alliance). She was Board Member of NCD Alliance (NCDA), Geneva for the period 2019-2021. Currently she is President-Elect of NCDA, Geneva. She is also Chairperson of South East Asia Region, NCDA.

Her expertise is in designing, implementing, managing and evaluating intervention programmes in various health promotion settings, large scale group randomized trials as well as qualitative and policy research on NCD prevention and management. Dr. Arora’s approach of translating research to policy and programme action have informed National Health Programmes. She is a member on various national and international expert committees on NCD prevention and control.

She has been a member of Ad Hoc Working Group on Implementation, Monitoring and Accountability on Ending Childhood Obesity, formed by WHO Director General during 2014-2016. She was a member of WHO Civil Society Working Group on the third High-level Meeting of the UN General Assembly on NCDs. She was also a Member of Second WHO Civil Society Working Group on NCDs formed by the WHO Director General for the term April 2019-April 2021.

Prof. Arora has been honoured with the Best Practices Award in Global Health in 2011 by the prestigious Global Health Council, for demonstrating best practice example in the area of health promotion among youth and community, especially focusing on preventing NCDs. She has been awarded with the WHO Director General’s World No Tobacco Day Award in 2012; Dr. Prem Menon outstanding service award in January 2018 by World-India Diabetes Foundation (WIDF) in recognition of her contributions to the education and prevention of diabetes among children in India and “Exceptional Women of Excellence 2018 Award” by Women Economic Forum (WEF) in April 2018.

Jeremiah has over 10 years’ experience working in global health policy, advocacy and leadership.  Jeremiah has previously served as the Executive Director of Reach, a global NGO, working to promote the health of vulnerable populations by supporting local, regional and global efforts to prevent and control rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.

Jeremiah served as Director of Policy and Advocacy at the World Heart Federation (WHF) where he led WHF’s work policy work on cardiovascular and rheumatic heart diseases, including successfully spearheading a global campaign for a World Health Assembly Resolution on rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.

Jeremiah has worked to support the involvement of patients and the patient voice in health policy making. During his time as Policy and External Affairs Director for the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations (IAPO), Jeremiah helped strengthen IAPO’s external partnerships with the global health and development community and spearheaded several publications including IAPO’s Review of Patient-Centered Healthcare Indicators.

Jeremiah holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy, and a BSc in Economics.