Meet the Alliance for Pulmonary Hypertension Board members: a dedicated team of passionate volunteers, each with a longstanding experience in patient advocacy within their own national pulmonary hypertension associations.
The President of the Alliance, Ioanna Alysandratou Ιωάννα Αλυσανδράτου leads the Hellenic Community for Pulmonary Hypertension; Greece, Hans-Dieter Kulla is President of Pulmonale Hypertonie E.V., Germany, Luc MATTHYSEN is President of HTAP Belgique, Belgium, and Louise Bouman is Chair of Stichting Pulmonale Hypertensie / PH Association the Netherlands, The Netherlands.
Ioanna and Louise are patients, Luc was the caregiver of his wife Rosie, who sadly lost her fight to pulmonary hypertension many years ago. Dieter was a friend of Bruno Kopp, the founder and former President of ph e.v.. All are Board members are experts in the field of pulmonary hypertension through their own personal experience of the condition and/or their work with their local communities. Louise and Luc are also EUPATI fellows.
The Alliance for Pulmonary Hypertension Board convenes weekly meetings with Secretary General Pisana Ferrari and representatives from our member associations every Thursday morning at 10 am. We also have three other volunteers from the pulmonary hypertension community who join in with us. This longstanding tradition has been upheld for the past three years. These gatherings serve as invaluable opportunities for brainstorming, discussion, and decision-making regarding future activities. Additionally, they provide a space for us to come together as a unified team, fostering collaboration and camaraderie among all involved.
The Alliance prides itself on relying exclusively on the work of volunteers: we have no staff or offices and have minimal overhead costs. We rely on outside professionals for highly specialised tasks (which we do not cover in-house) such as graphic design for our promotional materials and campaigns and for technical and organisational support for our live webinars. For the latter we have established a very fruitful collaboration with admedicum who serves as our secretariat and who we warmly thank for being at our side along all our journey.
