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Johanna Ralston is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the World Heart Federation. She has nearly twenty years of global health and development experience. Prior to becoming CEO of the World Heart Federation, Johanna served as Vice President, Global Strategies at the American Cancer Society (ACS). 
Ms. Ralston has strong leadership skills and played a key role in launching the ACS University, a programme that is aimed at strengthening civil society’s role in cancer control in low- and middle-income countries. She was has also been involved in the International roll-out of Relay for Life as well as leading global tobacco and cancer control projects in more than 30 countries including the Global Smokefree Partnership; multi-year smokefree and advocacy projects in Vietnam, North Africa, and China; and the development of the Africa Tobacco Control Consortium, a multi-year advocacy programme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  
Ms. Ralso has also piloted workplace-based health promotion programmes with large employers in China and India, including the China Smokefree Worksite initiative. She has significant experience in fundraising and has secured a number of major grants to support global capacity building and advocacy work.
Ms. Ralston is an alumna of Harvard and the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Programme, and has studied public health at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 
As CEO of World Heart Federation, Ms. Ralston's top priorities include raising the priority of cardiovascular health on the global health agenda, improving care of heart disease and stroke, promoting heart-healthy diets and physical activity for all, improving recognition and control of high blood pressure globally, advancing a tobacco-free world and eliminating rheumatic fever and minimise the burden of rheumatic heart disease.
Source: World Heart Federation
Image Credit: World Heart Federation




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Johanna Ralston is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the World Heart Federation. She has nearly twenty years of global health and development experience...