Conny Helder

When the fourth Rutte cabinet was formed, Helder was asked to join as Minister for Long-term Care and Sport on behalf of the centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). She was sworn in on 10 January 2022 and has proposed a plan to provide more elderly care at home rather than in nursing homes in reaction to the aging population of the Netherlands.

Helder became Minister for Long-term Care and Sport in January 2022 as part of the new fourth Rutte cabinet on behalf of the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). That party had won a plurality in the general election held in March 2021 and had formed a coalition with the centrist-progressive Democrats 66 (D66) party and the centrist-conservative Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) and Christian Union (CU) parties. The cabinet was sworn in on 10 January by King Willem-Alexander at Noordeinde Palace. Helder is a minister without portfolio – meaning that she does not lead a ministry of her own – and her responsibilities are long-term care (elderly and disabled care), mental healthcare, district nursing care, personal health budget, quality policy, labor market policy, sport, coordination of accountability of the health ministry's COVID-19 policy, lawful care and good management, decreasing bureaucracy, and organizability/regionalization. She set herself the goal of "keeping healthcare qualitatively good while also keeping it affordable, accessible, and attractive".

With her appointment as minister, Helder took over an investigation into a €100 million sale of imported face masks to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic by TV pundit and activist Sywert van Lienden and two accomplices. They claimed the deal was not-for-profit at a time when there was a shortage of personal protective equipment, but it was later discovered that it had earned them €20 million. When newspaper de Volkskrant reported in March 2022 that former health minister Hugo de Jonge had insisted that officials reach out to Van Lienden despite having earlier denied any involvement, a majority of the House of Representatives asked Helder for a statement of facts. She did not comply, citing the fact that the delayed investigation was still ongoing. Helder did release a number of documents related to De Jonge's involvement including a letter of his ahead of a debate. She admitted that De Jonge had asked for the release, and she apologized following criticism from opposition parties that she only informed the House at his request after initially refusing to do so.

During the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the cabinet decided to send Helder to attend a match between the Netherlands and host country Qatar. The House of Representatives had earlier carried a motion not to send a government delegation due to the country's human rights record. Following calls to wear an armband of the anti-discrimination campaign OneLove, Helder was criticized for showing up with a much smaller pin instead.

In January 2020, Helder joined the board of ActiZ, a national trade association representing about 400 elderly care providers. The first case of the coronavirus in the Netherlands was detected on 27 February, marking the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Together with other leaders of healthcare organizations in North Brabant, Helder established the Regionaal Overleg Niet Acute Zorg (RONAZ; Regional consultation of non-acute care) the following month. The body advised nursing homes to close their doors to visitors in order to mitigate the spread of the virus to this vulnerable group; Helder complied and did not allow any visitors starting on 16 March. The third Rutte cabinet made the measure mandatory three days later. The complete ban remained in place until 19 May, while Helder had called it no longer sustainable and inhumane a month earlier. Despite precautions, several nursing homes of tanteLouise experienced outbreaks of the coronavirus including Het Nieuwe ABG, where the army assisted and where 29 out of 168 inhabitants died in late 2020. Vaccinations started in the Netherlands in early January 2021, initially only at dedicated centers. A few weeks later – after the creation of smaller vaccine batches had been made possible – vaccinations commenced at nursing homes and disability care centers, and tanteLouise was chosen to be among twelve organizations that received the vaccines first as part of a pilot. On 1 March 2021, Helder, who used to be tanteLouise's sole director, was joined on the board of directors by two others. The supervisory board stated that the move was necessitated by increasingly complex elderly care, innovations, and major real estate projects.

Being a spokesperson for ActiZ and RONAZ, Helder often commented on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on nursing homes in the media, leading Brabants Dagblad to describe her as the face of elderly care during the pandemic. She drew attention to shortages in nursing homes of personal protective equipment at the start of the first wave of infections and of personnel in later stages, when many employees were absent after having contracted the virus. Helder also voiced the opinion that elderly care was initially overlooked in comparison to intensive care. After vaccines had become widely available, she defended ActiZ's position that elderly care facilities should have insight into the vaccination status of their employees. She said it would enable organizations to have discussions with teams with a low rate. Helder was among three people shortlisted in September 2020 for the title Topvrouw van het Jaar (Female leader of the year).

Helder started serving as director of tanteLouise, an elderly care provider active in Bergen op Zoom, Steenbergen, and Woensdrecht, in June 2017. Back then, the organization employed 1,800 people and took care of approximately 4,000 elderly people, including 1,100 in its approximately fifteen nursing homes. She wanted to improve the healthcare chain and to sign more longer-term agreements with health insurance companies and municipalities. The following year, one of its nursing homes in Steenbergen started experimenting with augmented reality glasses for medical diagnoses by remote specialists. Her tenure also saw the closing of some facilities, mostly older and smaller retirement homes, and the construction and renovation of others. To enable these changes, a temporary facility with close to 100 units was opened in 2019 on the grounds of mental institution Vrederust in Halsteren. Plans to tear down most of Huize St. Catharina in Bergen op Zoom in order to build a new facility faced some resistance due to the perceived historical value of the complex from 1929. However, the municipality decided against listing it as a heritage site, paving the way for its demolition. Helder became chair of the board of directors of the West-Brabant Care Innovation Center (CIC), a cooperation between local healthcare providers to promote innovations, in 2019. A few months before, a new nursing home of tanteLouise for dementia patients called Hof van Nassau had opened in Steenbergen, featuring several technological innovations such as GPS trackers to allow inhabitants to roam around more freely. It drew attention from the BBC, CCTV, and a delegation from Tsinghua University, and Helder joined Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport Hugo de Jonge on a working visit to China.

She was born in The Hague and trained to be a surgical assistant. She rose to managerial positions in hospitals and served as chair of the board of directors of an Eindhoven network of primary healthcare centers starting in 2010. Helder became director of tanteLouise, a major provider of elderly care in the Bergen op Zoom area, seven years later and was involved in a number of projects to renovate existing and construct new nursing homes. She also led a regional cooperation to promote innovations in the elderly care sector. tanteLouise was heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which reached the Netherlands in February 2020. Helder, who had become a board member of the trade association ActiZ the month before, made frequent media appearances to comment on the pandemic and to advocate the association's positions.

Helder left UMCU in July 2010 to become chair of the board of directors of the Eindhoven Corporation of Primary Health Care Centers (SGE). The organization operated ten centers in the city of Eindhoven with general practitioners, pharmacists, physiotherapists, and psychologists, among others. It was suffering from a €1.6 million operating deficit as well as a conflict between Helder's predecessor and healthcare professionals. Helder told upon her appointment that she wanted to expressly involve the latter group in important decisions. In 2015, under her leadership, SGE opened a new healthcare center in Strijp-S for expats living in Eindhoven after an evaluation had shown that many expats did not trust the Dutch healthcare system due to the relatively important role of general practitioners.

Helder has been living in 's-Hertogenbosch since the 1990s, and her partner is a general practitioner from that city. They have a son and a daughter, who were born around 2000.

Conny Helder (born 27 November 1958) is a Dutch healthcare manager, who has been serving as Minister for Long-term Care and Sport as part of the fourth Rutte cabinet since 2022.

Helder was born on 27 November 1958 in The Hague. She attended the secondary school Jan Campert Mavo in that city in the years 1971–74 and subsequently did havo and vwo at Thorbecke Lyceum. Helder applied to study medicine but was rejected because of a quota, and she started studying chemistry at Leiden University in 1978 instead. She dropped out the next year to follow a training at Bronovo and Westeinde, two The Hague hospitals, to become a surgical assistant. She completed it three years later and started working. Between 1986 and 1988, Helder also followed executive training in healthcare at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. She did another part-time study at Leiden University during this period in political science but did not finish it. Helder started filling managerial positions in hospitals, initially in The Hague and Amsterdam. In 2000, she became manager at the University Medical Center Utrecht's (UMCU) surgical division. She switched to the surgical specialties division of the same hospital four years later.