Vlad Mixich is the executive director of the Romanian Health Observatory in Bucharest, a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College Faculty of Life Science & Medicine in London, a former doctor and a health journalist. He also co-founded MedAlert, an NGO that fights against the corrpution in the sanitary sistem of Romania through crowdsourcing.

Vlad was born in Baia Mare, the son of a man born in a communist deportation camp and of a woman whose family was persecuted during the Soviet occupation of Romania. He spent his childhood in Craiova before leaving to study medicine in Timișoara. At the end of the college he was interested in psychotherapy and learnt everything about it from Hugh Jenkins, a therapist from the Institute of Psychiatry in London. He never thought he was going to change his mind after the long six years of medicine, but he needed a video recorder to record his patients and that changed everything.

He found out that Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster, was holding a contest for young journalists and the second place award was a recorder. Because he was writing at that time for the local newspaper Gazeta de Sud once a week, he thought to give it a shot and aim for the second place. He didn’t win the recorder, but he won first place a job to be the correspondent for Deutsche Welle in Romania.

In 2010 he become Senior Editor at Hotnews.ro, where he wrote on health issues in Eastern Europe and worldwide. His stories investigated corruption in the healthcare system, medicines shortages, mental health stigma, patients rights or young doctors brain drain. His writings were awarded several national and European prizes, mainly while working for HotNews and Deutsche Welle.

In 2015, Vlad started his master studies in International Health Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He received an Eisenhower Fellowship for Innovation (2014), a Marshall Memorial Fellowship (2012), a Carter Fellowship (2009), all in the United States.

This year, Mixich was nominated by the United States Embassy to receive a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship at Emory University. He won and he is now focusing on public health policy and administration, epidemiology and health education.

He still writes. His last article is about the fear of vaccines and how we should cope with it. It was published in July this year in Dilema Veche, a weekly cultural magazine.

When he is not writing and doing research about health, Vlad Mixich likes to travel. A lot. He even had the courage to reach 5414 m in the Himalayas. He kept a diary about the journey and he published it on his personal blog.

Five picks that will help know Vlad Mixich’s work better

🏔️ “Jurnalul unui pantofar în Himalaya” – A diary he kept about the journey to reach the 5414m in the Himalayas. It is a story about courage and fears that offers insight into the lives of people living there:http://mixich.ro/jurnalul-unui-pantofar-in-himalaya/#more-113

💉“Bau bau vaccinare” – An article about people’s fear of vaccines and how natural and completely normal it is: http://dilemaveche.ro/…/tema-sapt…/articol/bau-bau-vaccinare

💡“Sora Mara și gazele lacrimogene” – A short story about the effects of the protest that took place on the 10th of August in Bucharest: http://mixich.ro/sora-maria-si-gazele-lacrimogene/

💉This interview with Vlad about the increasing problems of the lies about vaccination that exist in the media and the effects that they have on those who refuse to vaccinate their children: http://mixich.ro/european-health-andriukaitis-vaccination-…/

💬The way we share information about our health – a TEDxBucharest speech about how unverified or misused information, belief in world conspiracies or internet based self-medication has led to a regress in treating various illnesses and use of vaccination, worldwide and in Romania as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3Egszu2IHw

Vlad Mixich is speaking at the 8th edition of The Power of Storytelling. Register here to meet him and the other amazing speakers who will tackle this year’s theme: Rewrite.