Kaisa Immonen elected as new co-chair of Patients' and Consumers' Working Party
NewsCorporate
Co-chair elected for a three-year mandate
The European Medicines Agency's (EMA) Patients' and Consumers' Working Party (PCWP) has elected Kaisa Immonen as its new co-chair.
Kaisa Immonen holds a Master of Arts (MA) in international relations and conflict analysis from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. She has eight years' experience in European Union health policy gained firstly at the Thalassaemia International Federation, a rare-disease patient organisation in Nicosia, Cyprus and then with the European Patients' Forum (EPF), in Brussels, Belgium. She has worked for EPF for six years and has served as director of policy since 2015.
Ms Immonen replaces David Haerry of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), who was co-chair of the PCWP and whose mandate has come to an end. She has been an alternate member of the PCWP since 2010.
“The PCWP in its ten years of existence has been a catalyst for a profound culture change at EMA and to some extent at national agencies. Our challenge now is to take the involvement of patients and consumers in the Agency's work even further,” says Kaisa Immonen. “As co-chair, I will bring a broad, cross-disease patient perspective to the role, as well as an in-depth knowledge of all the regulatory and policy frameworks relevant to the work of EMA.”
Kaisa Immonen will co-chair the PCWP for the next three years, together with Isabelle Moulon, Head of the Public Engagement Department at EMA.
The PCWP celebrated its ten-year anniversary this year. Its main role is to provide recommendations to EMA and its scientific committees on all matters of interest to patients and consumers in relation to medicines, as well as to monitor interactions between the Agency and patients and consumers.