Dr. Kate O’Brien is Director of the Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals Department at the World Health Organization (WHO.)  In this role she is responsible for leading WHO’s strategy and implementation to advance the vision of a world where everyone, everywhere, at every age, fully benefits from vaccines for good health and wellbeing.

Dr. O’Brien also serves as WHO’s Technical Lead of the COVID Vaccine Pillar (COVAX), a part of the Access to COVID Tools Accelerator (ACT-A).  COVAX aims to support countries to achieve their goals toward the Global COVID-19 Vaccine Strategy for 2022, released by WHO and the UN Secretary General in October 2021.

Dr O’Brien is a Canadian who trained as a pediatric infectious disease physician, epidemiologist and vaccinologist. She earned her BSc in chemistry from University of Toronto (Canada), her MD from McGill University (Canada), and her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (USA).