Helga Fogstad is the UNICEF Director of Health. Strongly committed to human rights, public health, and gender issues, Ms. Fogstad has extensive experience in forging partnerships and consensus building to promote the health and well-being of women, children, and adolescents. She is a health economist with more than 30 years of public health experience, including many years in developing countries at sub-national and national levels and at the global level within multilateral and bilateral agencies.

Prior to her time at UNICEF, Ms. Fogstad was the Executive Director of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH). During her tenure, membership reached over 1,400 organizations, strategies for increasing national advocacy and accountability for commitments to WCA were adopted, and adolescents and SRHR issues were pushed to the top of political agendas.

Ms. Fogstad has also held several roles at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), including her role as the Director of the Department of Global Health, Education and Research. While at Norad, she represented the Government of Norway in several global health initiatives and structures and guided Norway’s efforts to promote the rapid scale-up of proven cost-effective interventions with a special focus on the health-related Millennium Development Goals for women and children. In this capacity, she was actively engaged in political mobilization and advocacy initiatives, particularly surrounding the implementation of the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health and related UN commissions on information and accountability and life-saving commodities for women’s and children’s health.