Faculty
Presentation
João Breda is a Visiting Associate Professor at ENSP NOVA in the area of Health Promotion.
He is currently the Head of the new Athens Healthcare Quality Office and Special Advisor to the WHO Regional Director for the creation of Subregional Offices. Before moving to Greece, João held leadership positions at the WHO in Copenhagen (Denmark) for seven years and in Moscow (Russian Federation) for four years.
Until 2021, he led the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD Office), which is an integral part of the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
For eleven years, he was Programme Manager for Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of the European Action Plan for Food and Nutrition 2015-2020 and the Physical Activity Strategy for the WHO European Region 2016-2025.
He was awarded the Gold Medal for outstanding services in the field of Health by the Portuguese Ministry of Health in 2018. He has also received more than 20 scientific and academic awards and distinctions, including notably the Honorary Professorship by the Medical Academy of Kazakhstan in 2018, the Gerlev Prize 2016 (Denmark) and gold medals for his work on obesity, especially in children, by the Polish Institute of Maternal and Child Health (2021) and the Order of Nutritionists (2021) in Portugal.
Before joining the WHO, he was for more than 10 years the Portuguese focal point for WHO/Europe in the areas of alcohol, nutrition and physical activity, as well as for the High Level Group on Nutrition and Physical Activity and the European Platform on Food, Nutrition and Physical Activity of the European Union. He was the first coordinator of the national platform to combat obesity under the Portuguese Ministry of Health. He worked as a public health official in the Directorate-General for Health for many years. He was head of the Nutrition Department at the University Atlântica in Lisbon, as well as teaching and researching at the University of Coimbra (ESAC), the University of Algarve and the Coimbra School of Hospitality and Culinary Arts.
João Breda has published more than 250 original academic articles and reports, as well as more than 20 original books (including the best-seller on child nutrition in Portugal) and has more than 10,000 citations. He is also considered one of the leading obesity researchers at a global level.
He holds a doctorate in Food Consumption and Nutritional Sciences from the University of Porto, a master's degree in Business Administration from the EU Business School in Barcelona, a master's degree in public health and initially a degree in Nutritional Sciences.
Publications