We’re proud to announce that Ron has agreed to be our first chairperson of the Supervisory Board for the Jeffry Stijn Foundation for Mental Health and Patient Advocacy.
Ron’s strong ties to the community, extensive experience in health care management and passion for information management and technological advances, makes him an awesome addition to the team.
His strong dedication to information driven (management) decisions and effective solutions for health care providers keeps us striving for evidence based problem identification and problem solving. We’re looking forward to his input in this area, as well as his ability to keep the Foundation on track when it comes to our vision and mission.
Ron – Chairperson Supervisory Board
I’m Ronald Wijngaarde (call meRon). I’m the father of 3 adult kids and, when not working, can usually be found playing beach tennis or on my mountain bike. This keeps me happy and stress-resilient. I’ve lived in Aruba for over 12 years but before Aruba I lived in Surinam, Curacao and The Netherlands. As such I’m much attuned to cultural differences between countries and have learned to adapt and embrace new cultures quickly.
I’m Fluent in English, Dutch, Papiamento and get by in Spanish. Next to my electronics Engineering degree (University of Twente) I acquired degrees in management and population health management.
I’ve been working with the healthcare industry since my arrival on Aruba. First from the Health Insurance side and later for different Public Health government entities to collect Medical information in order to define policies and procedures. I’ve been instrumental (with others) in introducing the use of Electronic Medical Health records and exchanging health information between entities on the island.
I now have my own consultancy company promoting the exchange of information (“Make information Flow”) while conforming to privacy compliance regulations.
During an International Health Information Seminar I attended a lecture describing how mental health issues affected and compounded other health problems while being mostly ignored or just barely addressed. Other stories were told about real people struggling with mental health issues while they sometimes could be helped by just simply being recognized and understood by others.
These stories and the fact that those are mostly not being told on Aruba have led me to become part of the Jeffry Stijn Foundation to try to do my little part in the recognition and de-stigmatizing of Mental Health.
