On May 1 Maria Paola Chiesi was appointed President of the Chiesi Foundation, a non-profit organisation established in 2005 as an expression of the corporate social responsibility of the Chiesi Group, dedicated to research and international cooperation projects in the field of global health. The Foundation’s main objective is to promote access to neonatal and respiratory quality care in countries with low to medium levels of resources.
Maria Paola Chiesi, former Coordinator of the Foundation since 2010, succeeds to Dr Paolo Chiesi, Vice President of the Chiesi Group and President of the Foundation since its creation.
“I would like to thank the Chiesi Foundation Board of Directors for this appointment, which I am proud to accept with humility and gratitude, and which I will hold with the same dedication that has characterised the work of Dr Paolo Chiesi over the past few years. I care very much about the Foundation, its commitment beyond company boundaries,” said Maria Paola Chiesi, Shared Value & Sustainability Head of the Chiesi Group and elect President of the Chiesi Foundation. “I immediately believed in the value of strategic philanthropy, in combining economic resources and know-how in order to have a wider social impact as well as an active role in helping to solve the complexities that characterize our society. With this in mind, I travelled in 2010 to Burkina Faso, in sub-Saharan Africa, to visit the neonatal clinic of the San Camillo Hospital in Ouagadougou. From that visit, and from a deeper reflection on the inequalities of access to quality care, the NEST (Neonatal Essential Survival Technologies) project came about”.
Maria Paola Chiesi can count on the support of Massimo Salvadori who joined the Chiesi Foundation as Coordinator last February, with the task of establishing and increasing partnerships with the main stakeholders (local partners, NGOs, government agencies and scientific organisations) and managing projects. Massimo, after graduating in Sociology from the University of Trento, followed by a post-graduate master’s in management of social enterprises, began his professional career in the field of international cooperation at the Médecins du Monde (MdM) in the management of global health projects, working in Sierra Leone, Algeria, Mali and Senegal. In his latest experience, he served at COOPI - International Cooperation as Area Programme Manager for Western Africa.
The Foundation is active in the sector of international health cooperation, through the transfer of scientific knowledge and means, as well as the support to projects that promote the right to health of the populations most in need, with particular attention to the improvement of neonatal and respiratory health. The projects of the Foundation consist of the NEST (Neonatal Essential Survival Technology) model, which aims to reduce neonatal mortality rates by improving the quality of care in those places where access to quality care is not yet guaranteed, and the GASP project (Global Access to Spirometry Project) which focuses on the development of specific clinical skills for the diagnosis and management of chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) through the use of spirometry.
