Mary Bussell

Dr Bussell established TriMar Strategies to provide consulting and advocacy services to empower governments, NGOs, and businesses with innovative and data-driven solutions addressing pressing challenges to global health security while promoting healthy aging to foster resilient and thriving societies globally.  

Dr Bussell is an astute policy adviser with comprehensive knowledge of the global health ecosystem: able to think strategically while acting pragmatically creating and preparing robust plans to influence global health security and business. She maximizes productive stakeholder relationships by insightfully navigating through complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty to build impactful alliances. Her career has led to a comprehensive knowledge of the health ecosystem working with key stakeholders locally, nationally, and globally. As a health professional committed to public health, Dr Bussell examines the burden of diseases and the need for transformative change to provide improved person-centric care.  

Dr Bussell has experience in health policy, communications, and public affairs in addition to experience in the pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical marketing and advertising in New York. Dr Bussell has worked at the World Health Organization and The Commonwealth Fund concentrating on women’s health and related socioeconomic issues, and as a public health strategist and senior scientist for the UK’s Health Protection Agency (now Health Security Agency) with an emphasis on infectious disease and pandemic preparedness. At The Economist Group, she led global research on integrated care pathways in bone health, lung cancer policies in Europe, and she launched and led The Vaccine Ecosystem Initiative to promote a sustainable vaccine ecosystem by examining and reimagining elements critical for vaccine development, deployment, and adoption. Dr Bussell has held professorships in public health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the State University of New York College of Old Westbury, and the University of Surrey.  

Dr Bussell was the chair and a keynote speaker at the first three annual conferences on Greece’s Agenda to Combat Cancer, hosting the first in 2021 from her home during lockdown. She is thrilled to see how the conference has grown: in 2023 over 12,500 people participated remotely with 300 in-person attendees. She is delighted to be moderating two panels at the 2024 conference. Dr Bussell has authored numerous publications including Breathing in a New Era: a comparative analysis of lung cancer policies across Europe. She is working on a Consensus Statement to address gaps in lung cancer with the Hellenic Association of Lung Cancer. 

Dr Bussell received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Georgetown University in Washington, DC and maintains her US license as a Registered Nurse. She earned two Master's Degrees at Columbia University in New York City; and, a Doctorate in medical innovation, technology development and the role of public-private partnerships also from Columbia University. She was awarded Membership by Distinction to the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom in 2010 and received their Public Health Service Award in 2018.