Pavlos N. Theodorakis, MD, MSc, DipLSHTM, PhD, is a Senior Health Policy Advisor at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, WCO in Budapest, Hungary.
He joined the WHO European Centre for Primary Health Care, in Almaty, in July 2016, and was appointed in 2017 as the technical co-lead, and the WHO Regional Focal Point for the Alma-Ata 40 Anniversary Conference and the drafting of the Astana Declaration on PHC, as well as a member of the Alma-Ata 40 Coordination Team organizing the Global Conference on PHC that took place in Astana in October 2018. Between 2020-2022 he served as a Senior Health Policy Advisor at the WCO in Moscow, Russia, while he successfully led the implementation of three new offices (a sub-regional office on quality of care and patient safety in Athens, a project office in Bucharest to provide technical assistance for the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan of Romania, and a WHO Country Office in Larnaca, Cyprus). He also led a joint team of the Greek Ministry of Health and the WHO CO in Greece, developing the National Mental Health Action Plan for Greece 2023 – 2030.
Before joining WHO, he served as the CEO & Chairman of the Attica Mental Health Hospitals Trust, (2013-2015) and the Psychiatric Hospital of Chania (2004-2006) in Greece and closed it down after deinstitutionalizing all of its patients and establishing the first ever comprehensive community mental health network in the country.
He was the Focal Point for the Health Reform Support Program for Greece in collaboration with WHO EURO (2014-2015) and was appointed as an Honorary Senior Advisor at the Division of Health Systems and Public Health at WHO EURO for Primary Health Care. He chaired the National Primary Health Care Committee of the Ministry of Health in Greece, with the collaboration of the Task Force of the European Commission (2012-2015). In 2012 he was appointed as Senior Advisor at the Greek Ministry of Health for mental health.
He was the Senior Health Policy Advisor of the Mayor of Athens (2007-2010) and was elected President of the Organization of Health and Social Solidarity of the City of Athens (2008-2011). He was the National Coordinator for Greece of the Health Sector Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe (2005-2008), as well as to WHO for Mental Health (2005-2009 and 2012-2015). Between 1998-1999 he worked as an international delegate in primary care projects (Pogradec, Albania, and Abkhazia) with the Red Cross.
He was awarded his PhD at the Medical School of the University of Ioannina, Greece in 2003, on the evaluation of the quality of primary healthcare services on the Greek-Albanian border. He holds an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the London School of Economics & Political Sciences, where he also worked as a research associate (2002-2004). He also studied evidence based medicine at the University of Oxford (2003), and was a clinical and research fellow at the Medical School of the University of Linkoping in Sweden (2000) with a stipendium from the Swedish Government. He graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1996 from the Medical School of the University of Ioannina, Greece, where he was also specialized in General Practice/ Family Medicine.
He has lectured at several universities in Greece and abroad and has published more than 100 papers in peer reviewed international scientific journals – including in The Lancet, BMJ and Milbank Quarterly, books and WHO publications. Ethnic Greek, he speaks English, Greek and French.
