Ms Outi Kuivasniemi is Deputy Director for International Affairs at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in Finland. During her 25 year career at the Ministry, Ms Kuivasniemi’s focus has been on global and EU health and social policies and she is a senior expert in health security, global health governance and financing. Ms Kuivasniemi has accrued wide understanding of issues around global health and multilateral collaboration. Ms Kuivasniemi has served in a number of WHO, World Bank and EU Expert Working Groups, especially relating to global public goods, health security, financing, governance and non-communicable diseases.
Ms Kuivasniemi has been actively working on improving global health security and capacity building for country preparedness. She has been instrumental in developing international cross-sectoral collaboration in health security through the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) and the Alliance for Health Security Cooperation. She has been working to improve global equitable access to vaccines through Finland’s participation in WHO, CEPI (Vice Chair of Investors’ Council), International Vaccine Institute IVI (Member of Board of Trustees) and the European Union.
Ms Kuivasniemi holds a degree of Master in Political Sciences from the University of Åbo Akademi, Finland, where she graduated in 1995 with international law as her major. In 2016 she was decorated Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland for her services in public administration.
