Director for Planning and Coordination, National Institute of Public Health
EZOE Satoshi, MD, MPH, MPA, PhD
Profile
Dr. Satoshi “TOSHI” Ezoe currently serves as the Director for Planning and Coordination at the National Institute of Public Health, as well as the Deputy Assistant Minister for Global Health at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan (MHLW) since August 2024. Dr Ezoe is a health diplomat and a medical officer promoting public health nationally and globally. He joined MHLW in 2002 after clinical training. He has since then engaged in health care and public health policy, including in the areas of global health, universal health insurance system, non-communicable diseases, including mental health and cancer control, and infectious diseases crisis management. He was seconded to UNAIDS Headquarters in Geneva (2009-2012). He was the first appointed Senior Coordinator for Global Health at MHLW (2015- 2017). He was a Counsellor of the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations (2017-2020), where he was instrumental in facilitating UN General Assembly High-Level Meetings on tuberculosis (2018) and universal health coverage (2019). In August 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis, he became the Director of the Global Health Policy Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was responsible for coordinating overall global health strategy and diplomacy, including COVID-19 response, health agendas for the G7 Hiroshima Summit in 2023, and contribution to global health institutions and Initiatives such as the WHO, UNFPA, the Global Fund, Gavi, UNITAID and UHC2030. He was the corresponding author for two prime ministers and a foreign minister who contributed vision articles in the Lancet on global health. He is a Medical Doctor with a PhD and received a dual Master of Public Health and Public Administration from Harvard University.