Frode Forland

Policy Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway 

Frode Forland is a Policy Director at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He previously served as Scientific Director of Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The last two years he was based in Addis Ababa as a seconded Senior Advisor to Africa CDC in the areas of Evidence, Health Security and NCDs. 

Dr Forland has more than 30 years of working and leadership experience in the field of Public Health and Infectious Diseases. He has led several organisations at the national and international level on Public Health and Primary Health Care. 

Dr Forland has been a lead for three WHO Joint External Evaluations. He is a Scientific Board Member of the Global Health Unit of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and was the Norwegian Advisory Forum Member to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) for six years. During the COVID-19 pandemic he was part of the leadership group of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), and he was frequently used as a spokesman in the media. 

He holds an MD from the University of Oslo with a specialty in Public Health and General Practice. He previously worked as an Associate Professor in Public Health at the University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway. He has more than 25 years of experience in Evidence Synthesis and application of Evidence Based Methods for Public Health.