Heini Utunen Föreläsare

Unit Head
World Health Organization

Heini Utunen is Head of Unit of the Learning and Capacity Development Unit of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergencies Programme. Her functions and experience cover workforce capacity building and learning solutions in a broad institutional and multilateral context.
During the COVID-19 pandemic she has led the COVID-19 online learning response delivering massive scale learning interventions on OpenWHO.org based on WHO’s technical evidence-based guidance, learning resources now reaching 8 million enrolments.
Ms Utunen joined the WHO during the Ebola West Africa outbreak in 2014 and led the pre-deployment trainings, and provided to the cascade training curriculum development, face-to-face trainings and e-learnings. During 2016-2018 her functions covered country capacity building and simulation exercises for the novel area of risk communications in the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness. During 2009-2013 Ms Utunen worked in the United Nations country team in Vietnam, in natural disaster preparedness and response area in the humanitarian cluster system.
Ms Utunen has prior experience in the government of Finland where she served as Communication Officer of the Minister of Health in Finland. She functioned also as a Training Officer at the Crisis Management Centre, mainly involved in the capacity building of the European Union, African Union and United Nations in several post-conflict missions.
Ms Utunen has Master’s degree in Information Studies and Bachelor in Political Science and she is defending her PhD dissertation in the Information Technologies and Communication Sciences in September 2023.