James Fitzgerald is the Director of Health Systems and Services at the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Americas. He oversees the PAHO/WHO work program in health policy and governance, health systems and services organization, health workforce, financing in health, health research and access to medicines and health technologies in the Region of the Americas. As Director of Health Systems and Services at PAHO/WHO, he has led the development of reference policy frameworks to guide health sector reform to achieve Universal Health Coverage based on the Primary Health Care Strategy in the Americas. He has coordinated strategies to strengthen health systems resilience, health services organization, workforce capacity and regulatory systems development of medicines and medical products. He oversees the management of the PAHO Strategic Fund, a pooled procurement mechanism in the Americas to improve access to public health supplies, as well as the PAHO Virtual Campus, a capacity building platform with outreach to more than one million health workers in the Americas. As a national of Ireland, he holds a B.Sc.(Pharm) and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. After several years working with the pharmaceutical industry in Ireland, he joined PAHO/WHO in 1997 with posts held in developing countries including Haiti and Brazil. He assumed leadership of the regional work program in Medicines and Health Technologies at PAHO headquarters, Washington DC, USA in 2008, and was subsequently appointed Director of Health Systems and Services in 2014. He is the author and coauthor of numerous articles and is a member of a number of professional societies and advisory groups associated with his profession and area of work.