Mary Lynne Van Poelgeest-Pomfret is a long-standing international patient advocate promoting the rights of patients at both national and international levels. She is a member of several patient advocacy movements and organizations including IAPO (International Alliance of Patient Organizations) and EPF (European Patients Forum). She has organized several workshops and given numerous presentations at major international scientific and patient advocacy/engagement events throughout Europe. She is also a member of the EFPIA (European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations) Patient ThinkTank. She became Vice-Chair of the EFGCP (European Forum for Good Clinical Practice) in March 2017 and is keen to actively contribute to their work primarily from the patient perspective. She participated in the first EUPATI workshop of patient advocate experts in Frankfurt in September 2012 and actively participates in EUPATI.
Lynne became the President of the World Federation for Incontinent Patients (WFIPP) in January 2011. WFIPP is an international umbrella organization dedicated to enhancing the rights of patients suffering from all forms of incontinence, chronic pelvic pain, more recently prostate cancer issues and pelvic floor dysfunction in general. She was also recently appointed as a Board member of the European Association of Urology (EAU) Patient Office and a member of two EAU guidelines panels – Female Urinary Tract Symptoms (FLUTS) and Chronic Pelvic Pain. She is also an ePAG member of the EAU Patient Office.
Until April 2016, she served as the chairperson of the Interstitial Cystitis Patients’ Organization in the Netherlands. More recently she became a member of the ‘Core Board’ for one of the EIP – AHA (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing) Focus groups led by the University of Valencia, Spain.
Lynne has played an active role in several IMI and IHI projects, including PARADIGM as patient engagement representative for EFGCP. She represents EFGCP as a member of the Consortium for the IMI project ‘Conception.’ These initiatives are very much concerned with access to healthcare and patient engagement in healthcare across Europe. Additionally, she is a member of several scientific advisory committees and panels. She is a member of the IHI list of patient experts and is also listed as patient expert (Urology) with the EMA.
Lynne is also a founder member of the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) steering committee AMR stakeholder group as well as other international AMR groups (e.g. AMR Narrative, WHO Patient Safety Alliance).
She is co-chair of the European Health Coalition – a coalition of some 54 multi-stakeholder groups from all areas of healthcare, patient organizations, pharma and medical devices, academia and scientific institutions and others which enables her to keep up with the latest trends in healthcare at EU level.
As of September 2024 Lynne will be working on behalf of WFIPP as a full Consortium member for the recently approved PROCON Erasmus project. It is partly thanks to the efforts of WFIPP that this project has been approved (July 2024) with 100 % Erasmus financing. WFIPP is one of the 8 Consortium members and will be co-ordinated by the University of Vic, Barcelona, Spain. It will foster innovation in nursing homes (NHs), specifically in the promotion of modern continence care in NH residents
She has just been appointed as Advisory Board member for the OPTIMISE project (submission to ZonMw in the Netherlands): Optimising dietary treatment by measurIng body composition and function resulting from malnutrition and/or sarcopenia.
Lynne worked for Shell in the Netherlands for 23 years and has a BA degree from the UK and Drs. Degree from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
She lives in the Netherlands, is married and has a daughter and five-year old grandson.