Ricardo Baptista Leite

Early life

He was born in Toronto, Canada, the son of João Baptista Leite (from Benguela, Angola) and Ana Maria Guerreiro Leite (Viseu, Portugal) and brother of Raquel Baptista Leite. Baptista Leite was a distinguished student at school, and appeared on the honour roll many times. He studied from pre-school until 5th grade at Regina Mundi Catholic School in Toronto.

In 1991 he moved with his family to Portugal, having lived since then in the Cascais area. He completed 6th grade at the English-speaking St. Dominic's International School in Polima, Portugal. After learning how to speak Portuguese, he enrolled at Colégio Marista de Carcavelos (Carcavelos, Portugal), where he was elected as President of the Student Council and completed his high school education with a 19/20 (95%) average.

University years and career

Ricardo Baptista Leite enrolled at the Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (Faculty of Medical Sciences) of the New University of Lisbon, and obtained his medical degree in 2004. During his university years, Baptista Leite was known as an active member of the Students' Association and a student representative in the Faculty Pedagogic Council. While studying, Leite was also a basketball athlete at the Associação Desportiva de Oeiras from 1994 to 2000, and pursued music education, mainly classical guitar.

In 2005, Baptista Leite completed a one-year general medical residency program at Fernando Fonseca Hospital (Amadora, Portugal), following which he enrolled in a five-year infectious diseases residency program. After completing the first year of the program at Coimbra Hospital Centre (Coimbra, Portugal), he moved back to Lisbon, having completed the remaining five years of the practical curricula of the residency program at Egas Moniz Hospital (West Lisbon Hospital Centre) in July 2011.

During this period, Baptista Leite worked under the supervision of Dr. Kamal Mansinho and Dr. Ana Cláudia Miranda as part of the ID department medical staff, having been responsible for in-ward activity, ambulatory medicine, and emergency medicine. He was also appointed co-investigator in multiple clinical trials (national and international), authored/co-authored multiple publications and supported the university in-hospital staff and students. Within the program, Baptista Leite completed traineeships in microbiology, virology and intensive care medicine. He also completed an internship in public health at the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (HIV, STIs and Viral Hepatitis Programme, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2011).

Baptista Leite is currently the Head (Scientific Coordinator) of Public Health, within the Research Center of the Intituto de Ciências da Saúde (Institute of Health Sciences) at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (Catholic University of Portugal).

He is a member of the faculty with teaching and research responsibilities at the department of Microbiology and Parasitology (Director: Professor Paulo Paixão) at the NOVA Medical School of the NOVA University of Lisbon (Lisbon, Portugal), since 2007.

Ricardo is also a guest lecturer at the NOVA IMS (Information Management School) at NOVA University, where he is the coordinator of the curricular unit on Sustainable Healthcare.

As a medical consultant at a healthcare software development multinational, Baptista Leite is responsible for giving medical insight to health-oriented software developers and for doing research for new technological solutions for medical activities.

Since May 2013, Ricardo Baptista Leite has been associated with the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, at Maastricht University, as an external PhD candidate in the fields of public health and health systems.

Until having been elected as a MP, Leite also served as a member of an international advisory board at Abbott Laboratories with the main task of supporting the company in its social responsibility actions directed towards the HIV community (mainly through contacts with policy makers, journalists and the general public to increase awareness of the long-term impacts of living with HIV and to fight against stigmatization).

After medical school, Ricardo Baptista Leite pursued postgraduate education at the following institutions: Johns Hopkins University (Maryland, US), Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts, US), IESE Business School (Madrid, Spain)/Harvard Kennedy School of Government (Massachusetts, US), Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York, US), AESE Business School (Lisbon, Portugal), European Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain), New University of Lisbon (Lisbon, Portugal), University of Lisbon (Lisbon) and Lusofona University (Lisbon).

Political activity

Baptista Leite was introduced into party politics in 2000 by Professor Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. At the time he enrolled both in the Social Democratic Party (Portugal) (PSD) and the Social Democratic Youth (JSD). Having left the Social Democratic Youth at the age limit of 30, he was voted as a lifetime honorary member of the organization at their XXI National Convention in 2010. Baptista Leite is currently active within the Social Democratic Party as a member of the PSD National Advisory Council (as an MP) and of the National Committee for Reviewing the PSD Political Program (GENEPSD), mainly on issues associated with healthcare and local government.

He is an elected Member of Parliament in Portugal, since 1 July 2011. Within the Parliament, he currently takes up the following positions: coordinator and permanent member of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, permanent member of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Substitute Member of Economic Affairs and Public Investments Committee, Member of the Parliamentary Group on Population and Development, and President of the Portugal/Canada Parliamentary Friendship Group.

Within Parliament, he is also Chair of the all-party Parliamentary HIV/AIDS work group. With experience in HIV clinical treatment, public policy and humanitarian work, Baptista Leite maintains a breadth of knowledge and a unique perspective on current aspects of HIV/AIDS (and other ID) management and politics.

He is also an elected member of the Cascais City Hall Assembly, since 9 October 2005 (second term). In December 2001, he was elected member of São Domingos de Rana Town Hall Assembly, having completed the mandate in October 2005. He served as an elected member of the Lisbon Metropolitan Assembly from 2005 to 2014.

Having served many positions on local and district levels within the Social Democratic Party, he was President of the Cascais Political Committee, from 9 May 2008 to 9 June 2010. During this mandate, PSD won the European elections, and in Cascais the party achieved its greatest majority in recent democratic history, having elected António D'Orey Capucho as Mayor (for his third and last term).

During his years within the Social Democratic Youth, Baptista Leite served as Director of the National Studies Cabinet and as member of local and district political committees. He also chaired two educational courses, in 2005 and 2009, on local governance promoted by the Social Democratic Party. In the 2009 course, Leite promoted a debate between two former Prime Ministers of Portugal, Francisco Pinto Balsemão and Mário Soares.

Working for the community

Much of Ricardo’s volunteer work is related with health and development organizations, such as being a member of the Parliamentarians for Diabetes Global Network and the Center for Health and Development International Advisory Board (based in Mangalore, India), among many other affiliations with patient associations in Portugal (such as GAT, SOS Hepatites, and Fundação Renal Portuguesa). Baptista Leite is also a member of the Parliamentarians for Global Action Network, the 2015 European Young Leaders Programme, and he is to date the only Portuguese citizen to have been invited to be part of the European Leadership Network.

He is one of the founders of the Estoril Conferences, which are focused on the issue of globalization under the motto "Global Challenges, Local Answers". He is the sole founder of CREATING HEALTH – Research and Innovation funding, a sustainable nonprofit which has been set up within the Catholic University of Portugal to help capture funding for health innovation and research projects.

He was also a fellow at the ZEIT Stiftung - Fundação Gertúlio Vargas 2015 Latin American Forum on Global Governance. He is a member of the ZEIT Stiftung alumni.

Ricardo is the main author of Strategic Consensus on Integrated Management of Hepatitis C in Portugal, published as a book in May 2014. This consensus was a breakthrough study in the field of public health and summarized the main conclusions of a think tank which included Portugal's 30 main experts in the field, following over 6-months of meetings and discussions.

He is also the main author of the book Citizenship for Health, which is focused on the role of citizens in health promotion and disease prevention.

In the past, he has also served as a volunteer member of the executive board of a non-governmental organization (Champagnat Foundation) responsible for humanitarian missions in Africa and support for needy children in Portugal.

He was also a member of the healthcare policy work group at the Francisco Sá Carneiro Institute, at the time presided over by Alexandre Relvas. By invitation from the Institute's President, Carlos Carreiras, Baptista Leite has been a member of the Institute's General Assembly, which is led by Portugal's former Prime Minister, Francisco Pinto Balsemão. He is now an elected member of the Institute's Supervisory Board.