Ricardo Baptista Leite

Ricardo is the Founder & President of UNITE. Ricardo is a Medical Doctor trained in Infectious diseases and was a Member of the Portuguese National Parliament between 2011 and May 2023, where he was, since the beginning of his third term, the Vice-President of the Social Democratic Party Parliamentary Board and the National Spokesperson for Health of the Social Democratic Party.

Ricardo is currently the CEO of HealthAI, the Global Agency for Responsible AI in Health. He is also the Chair of the NOVA Center for Global Health Lab at NOVA Information Management School (NOVA IMS).

Ricardo is a Member of the Council of the World Health Summit and also the Vice Chair of the ‘Parliamentary Network on The World Bank & International Monetary Fund’, where he works directly with The World Bank Group and IMF. The network’s mission is to provide a platform for parliamentarians around the globe to advocate for increased accountability and transparency in International Financial Institutions and multilateral development financing.

In April 2019, Ricardo became Global Ambassador of the ‘G20 Health & Development Partnership’ aimed at advising and advocating G20 countries on health policies aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In recognition of Ricardo’s academic work and policy leadership in the field of hepatitis c, Ricardo was awarded by ‘The Economist Intelligence Unit’ as an ‘HCV Change Maker’ (2016). This acknowledgement was attributed to solely six people globally. He is the main author of the book “A road to the cure – proposals to change the portuguese healthcare system” (PT, 2020) and also “Citizenship for Health” (PT, 2015).