By GAD (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

• PRIME MINISTER
  
• FIRST female prime minister of Norway
• After attending medical school, she earned her master of public health degree from Harvard University
• Served as Norway's Minister for Environmental Affairs for five years
• Elected Prime Minister of Norway three times, and filled almost half of her cabinet with women
• Implemented many reforms aimed at bridging the gender gap, such as requiring quotas for women candidates for elections; many of these reforms were soon adopted by other Scandinavian countries​
• Led the World Commission on Environment and Development (commonly referred to as the Brundtland Commission), and helped author a report titled Our Common Future, which popularized the concept of sustainable development, highlighting the links between health and environmental policy​
• ​After completing her final term as prime minister, she was elected director of the World Health Organization, where she emphasized that not only was poverty often a cause of poor health, but that poor public health was a detriment to economic growth in the developing world
• Left the World Health Organization in 2003 and acted as an Environmental Envoy to the United Nations, as well as one of three Special Envoys for Climate Change

Open for Debate

Brundtland actively fostered partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and the World Health Organization (WHO) when she was director there. While some didn't agree with this move, fearing that WHO would become too dependent on the corporations, it was under Brundtland's leadership that the drug companies agreed for the first time to reduce prices in developing countries.

Bibliography: Keller, Richard C. "Brundtland, Gro Harlem." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, 2008, 260-261.

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