Mélanie Samson

PhD, MPH

Mélanie Samson is a Senior Technical Officer for Women’s Health at the Global Surgery Foundation, based in Geneva, Switzerland. A global health expert with a particular focus on right-based approaches to public health with a career spanning over 20 years in global health governance, access to essential medicines and quality care, Mélanie has engaged in initiatives regarding cancer control, mother and child health and HIV. She has extensive academic and professional experience in (and great passion for) access to quality care and policymaking at the national and global levels, specifically in low-resource settings and vulnerable populations.

Prior to joining the GSF in 2024, Mélanie served for eight years at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), where she was in charge of the regionalisation of the capacity building portfolio, as well as several projects and programmes in cervical cancer elimination and patient engagement as well as other initiatives incubated by UICC. She also worked at Expertise France on access to viral load testing in Francophone Africa as well as the French National Cancer Institute with a focus on access to quality cancer care.

Mélanie holds a Ph.D. in global health law from the Geneva Graduate Institute and Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, as well as an MPH in global health leadership from New York University (NYU). She completed a post-doc at NYU on global standards for health technologies and has several publications on global health and access to care in low and middle-income countries.