Bettina Borisch

Chief Executive Officer

Bettina Borisch is a physician, histopathologist and public health academic who has led the World Federation of Public Health Associations since 2009. Founded in 1967 and based in Geneva, the federation brings together more than 140 member associations representing some five million public health professionals. She studied medicine and history at the universities of Kiel in Germany and Lausanne in Switzerland, holds an MD and a Master of Public Health completed in 2005, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists in the United Kingdom. She became professor and head of the Institute of Clinical Pathology at the University of Geneva in 1995, moved in 2005 to its Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, which became the Institute of Global Health in 2015, and is professor emerita there. Her research on neoplastic lesions of the immune system and on breast cancer runs to over 120 papers. She was editor-in-chief of the journal Pathobiology until 2020 and co-edits the Journal of Public Health Policy, and is a past president of Europa Donna, the European breast cancer coalition, and founding president of its Swiss forum.