Islene Araujo De Carvalho MD, MPH, MSc

Dr Islene Araujo de Carvalho is the Senior Strategy and Planning Advisor of the Department of Ageing and Life Course at the World Health Organization in Geneva. She is responsible for providing global strategic leadership on issues relating to demographic change in ways that foster the health, independence and participation of older people; and developing relevant policy, standards, interventions and tools.

Dr Araujo is a Medical Doctor with Post-Graduate training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, a Masters in Public Health, and a Diploma in International Health. She pursues an integrated interdisciplinary, cross-cutting set of competencies such as policy developing, programme management and planning, research, monitoring and systems thinking. Currently, her focus is on ensuring that research in the area of ageing and health is communicated to decision-makers and translated into effective policy and action.

She has worked on community health, policy development, health promotion and primary health care for 15 years, at different levels of service, including more than 10 years with the UN System, on PAHO Washington DC, the International Organization for Migration in Zimbabwe and Geneva, and WHO Geneva.

She also worked in the Latin American, Africa and Asian regions for a longer period in various capacities, in Brazil as the Coordinator of the State Reproductive Health Programme; lately as the National Coordinator of the Brazilian Maternal Health Programme; in Tanzania and Zimbabwe as National Health Coordinator in charge of setting up health service delivery systems for primary health care, with emphasis on prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases.