Dominika Novak Mlakar

completed her studies at the Faculty of Medicine in Ljubljana in 1998. Since 2008 she has been a specialist in public health. She started her career in Community Health Centre Ljubljana where she has been actively involved in smoking cessation programs. Following examples from abroad, she established first Slovenian smoking cessation telephone counselling (helpline) in 2006.

In 2006, she participated in the preparation of documents for the establishment of the colorectal cancer screening programme, Program Svit, and has been involved in the programme implementation at the national level since 2009. Since 2009, she has been employed at the Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia, today the National Institute of Public Health. She is actively involved in Svit Program Central Unit coordination and works closely with colonoscopists and histopathologists involved in the implementation of the screening programme. In 2017, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Slovenia nominated her as the colorectal cancer screening programme director.