Sandra del Pino is the Cultural Diversity Advisor at the Pan American Health Organization. She has more than 15 years of international experience in areas related to health, human rights, and development. The focus of her work has been on international public health initiatives, aimed at the reduction of health inequities.
She joined the UN system in Geneva, at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in 2006. For four years, she managed different programs and portfolios that demanded sensitive negotiations with authorities, as well as high-level interventions in several countries. In 2010, she joined the Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WPRO) in Manila as the Technical Officer on Equity, Gender and Human Rights. Her focus was to assist the most excluded populations improve their access to health.
Of Spanish nationality, Sandra del Pino holds a Law Degree from the University of Sevilla and has specialized in International Law, Human Rights and Peaceful resolution of conflicts. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Translation from the University of Geneva, with a Thesis on Traditional Knowledge and a PhD in Health Sciences from the University of Huelva, with a focus on Health inequalities amongst people of African descent in the Americas.
Since 2011, she has been working at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), providing technical cooperation on health equity, addressing ethnic inequalities in health with a human rights approach. She is responsible for the management of the ethnicity program and led the successful negotiation of the first Policy on Ethnicity and Health for the Americas, unanimously approved by all PAHO Member States in 2017.
Sandra has extensive experience working with populations in situation of vulnerability including women and girls, Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent and members of other ethnic groups.
