The Commonwealth Fund

REGINE M.A.TH. AALDERS, M.Sc., is the counselor for Health, Welfare and Sport at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in the U.S. and Canada (since October 1, 2014). She has over 30 years of experience working in the civil service and internationally at different posts, focusing on social and health policies, international work, and management. Over the past four years, she was involved in economic diplomacy for the economic Top Sector of Life Sciences and Health, combining the assets of Dutch health care, health care partners, and health care industries with foreign trade and preparing missions and programs for ministers, the private sector, and academia (China, India, the Russian Federation, and Brazil). The health policy programs focused on cross border health threats: infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, the safety of medical devices and medicines and innovations in health systems (sustainability in health care, e-health, care for the elderly). As a trainer she took part in public health and infectious diseases courses for EU Matra and twinning Programmes for new EU and neighboring countries from 2006 – 2010 (Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Romania, Turkey, Jordan, Morocco). From 2008 she was a delegate of the Netherlands delegation to the yearly World Health Assemblee and the regional Committee for WHO Euro. Starting in 2006, she was the senior global health advisor of the International Affairs Department of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. In 2005 and 2006 she took part in the preparatory work for the UN Convention on the Human Rights for People with Disabilities on behalf of the Netherlands. Aalders was the head of the Inspectorate for Youth Care of both the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport from 19922005 and was head of the International Welfare Policy Department from 1987-1992. Aalders graduated from the faculty of social sciences at the University of Utrecht.