Speaker Biographies

Speakers include:

Prof. David Foxcroft

SPAN Project Coordinator, Professor of Community Psychology and Public Health, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Professor David Foxcroft is Professor of Community Psychology and Public Health at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. His work is focused on understanding (and improving) behaviour in context, especially how social structures (e.g. families, schools, communities, employers, regulation, government) can support improved health and wellbeing in communities and populations. A focus is the prevention of risk behaviours in children and young people. He was awarded the Tobler prize by the U.S. Society for Prevention Research for his research on preventing youth alcohol misuse, and he recently co-authored a prize winning book on Drug Policy and the Public Good (Oxford University Press). Since 2014 he is the President of the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR).

Dr. Roman Gabrhelik

Head of the Primary Prevention Centre and the Treatment Centre at the Department of Addiction, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic

Dr. Roman Gabrhelik is head of the Primary Prevention Centre and the Treatment Centre at the Department of Addiction, 1st Medical Faculty, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. His work is focused on universal school-based interventions, targeting different risk behaviours in children and young people, and on studying the effectiveness of composite universal prevention programmes. He is directly involved in the development of the National System of School-based Prevention of Risk Behaviour in the Czech Republic. Roman also works in the area of the application of eHealth and mHealth in treatment of tobacco dependence and in pharmacotherapy of methamphetamine dependence.

Prof. Janet Mifsud

Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta

Professor Janet Mifsud is an Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Malta. Her research considers the treatment of epilepsy and the abuse of over the counter medicines, especially in sports. She is the Vice-President (Europe) of the International Bureau for Epilepsy, a member of the National Anti-Doping Commission and Medical Commission, Malta Football Association.

Janet is a board member of the Malta Council for Science and Technology and is the national co-ordinator for COST – European Cooperation in Science and Technology. She has acted as peer expert evaluator for the EC DG Research and is a member of the exploitation board of FP7 project Desire: Development and Epilepsy. Janet is a member of the Centre for Freedom from Addiction, President’s Foundation for Social Well-Being.

Peer van der Kreeft

Lecturer Prevention, University College Ghent

Peer, a social educator, has been the head of prevention at De Sleutel for 25 years until September 2011 when he was appointed as a full time lecturer/researcher at the University College Ghent, Belgium. Internationally, Peer presided the EU Prevnet Network from 2002 - 2006, and has led the EU-DAP Drug Abuse Prevention Intervention group and the EU-DAP Faculty. He is also on the board of directors of EUSPR, the European Society for Prevention Research. He is an active contributor to networks such as the ICAA, the Pompidou group, UNODC, WHO & EMCDDA.

Matej Košir

European Project Manager, Science for Prevention Academic Network (SPAN)

Matej is the Director of UTRIP in Slovenia. Previously he worked as a senior consultant and project manager at the Office on Drugs and the Ministry of Health; was a policy analyst at the Ministry of Interior; and was a member of the local NGO dealing with young people. Matej was national coordinator of the alcohol policy at the Ministry of Health. He is a member of the Civil Society Forum on Drugs (DG Justice). He is a member of the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR), Society for Prevention Research (SPR), International Confederation of ATOD Research Institutions (ICARA) and many others relevant project or research networks in the field of prevention.

Prof. Rosaria Galanti

Adjunct Professor, Karolinska Institute

Rosaria is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. She has achieved her MD degree in Italy, pursued clinical work in the field of preventive and community medicine, and obtained a PhD degree in Cancer Epidemiology at Uppsala University. Rosaria conducts population based epidemiologic studies of tobacco use and prevention, especially among youths. She was the Swedish PI for the European Drug Addiction Prevention Trial (EUDAP). She is the director of two courses on methods of outcome evaluation of public health interventions.

Dr. Michal Molcho

Lecturer, Discipline of Health Promotion, School of Health Sciences, NUI Galway, Science for Prevention Academic Network (SPAN)

Michal Molcho is a lecturer in the Discipline of Health Promotion, School of Health Sciences, in NUI Galway. She is a long-standing member of the international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) network, where she is a member of the study coordinator committee and the chair of the Policy Development Group. Previously, she was the chair of the Violence and Injury Prevention working group. Michal was a consultant for the World Health Organization Region for Europe, the Programme for Violence and Injury Prevention and is a member of the steering committee of the Irish safety alliance.