AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) is pleased to welcome Prof. Vladimir Mendelevich and Hernán L. Fuenzalida-Puelma as new members of its Board. They joined the Board on January 1, 2016.
Prof. Mendelevich is a psychiatrist from Kazan, Russia; in 1985 he started teaching psychiatry at Kazan State Medical University and since 1997 he heads the university’s Department of medical and general psychology.
In 1999 Prof. Mendelevich established an opioid treatment centre to offer rehabilitation services to people who use drugs. Since 2001 Prof. Mendelevich works in the field of HIV prevention and the following year he became a scientific consultant of the International Harm Reduction Development programme funded by the Open Society Foundations.
Prof. Mendelevich has organised more than 30 seminars and international conferences in Russia and Ukraine on evidence-based interventions for people who use drugs. An author of over 600 scientific articles and 50 books, Prof. Mendelevich is also an expert of WHO and a consultant of UNODC. He is a board member of the All-Russian Psychiatric Association and European Opiate Addiction Treatment Association.
In 2007 Prof. Mendelevich won the International Rolleston Award, which is given annually to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to reducing harms from psychoactive substances at an international level. He is the director of Institute for research of mental health problems and the editor-in-chief of “Neurological Bulletin”.
Hernán L. Fuenzalida-Puelma, Esq. LL.M (Yale University Law School) is a citizen of the USA and Chile, a lawyer with extensive international experience in 56 countries in policy and regulation, health care financing and insurance, and institutional development.
For over 10 years Mr. Fuenzalida served as a General Counsel at the Pan American Health Organization / Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO). Today he is the co-editor of pioneering Scientific Publications with PAHO/WHO, Washington DC: “The Right to Health in the Americas, a constitutional comparative study”, “Bioethics” and “Legal and Ethical Issues in the Study of HIV/AIDS”.
One of Mr. Fuenzalida’s recent publications, together with other authors, includes “Moving toward Universal Health Coverage in Social Health Insurance in Vietnam”. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Caucasus Journal of Health Sciences and Public Health; Editorial Board of Hepatology, Medicine and Policy (HMAP); Senior Associate with The World Progress Center (Ohio); Senior Associate with Health Investment & Financing (New York); and Bar Associations of Santiago, Chile, and Costa Rica.
“We are pleased to welcome our new board members and look forward to working together in 2016,” said Anke van Dam, executive director of AFEW. As of 2016, there are seven board members at AFEW. For their biographies please click here.
