International Health Study Tours

Germany October 13 –19, 2007

Sophia Schlette, MPH
Project Director International Network Health Policy & Reform
Senior Expert Health Policy
Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh, Germany

From February until mid-August, 2007 Sophia is based at the German Federal Minister of Health’s Head Office in Berlin, working for the strategic policy unit - "Grundsatzfragen der Gesundheitspolitik". She has been "lent" by the Bertelsmann Stiftung to the Federal Ministry of Health to support activities under the German EU presidency and to look across the borders for good practice and policy solutions for current and ongoing reform issues such as care coordination, long-term care, and (regional) health care market chances and challenges.

Sophia Schlette joined the Bertelsmann Foundation in early 2002 as a project director and coordinator of the International Network Health Policy & Reform. Sophia has extensive experience in project management, consulting and graduate level teaching. She enjoys international networking, and the transfer of knowledge within and between developed and developing countries.

Her career as a public health professional began in 1989 in Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa working with UNICEF and WHO, then took her to Latin America on behalf of a German development agency. In 1996, she turned to domestic and European health affairs. In Germany, Sophia worked as a research assistant and project manager for various specialized institutions on health policy planning at the federal, regional and municipal level. From 1999-2002, she advised a Green party health politician of the German Bundestag on health system reform, social health insurance, and bioethics. Time permitting, Sophia continues her short-term consultancies in Austria, Armenia, China, Central America, Colombia, etc. on behalf of GTZ (German Agency for Technical Cooperation), WHO, ILO and the European Commission, planning or evaluating projects on a wide range of issues (health sector reform, health & human resources, health care financing and insurance issues, organizational development, applied epidemiology and management, AIDS prevention).