ISCEP'S EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
Current Council members
Gilles Paradis
ChairGilles Paradis is a Full Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health (EBOH) at McGill University and a medical consultant at the Public Health Institute of Quebec. He was Strathcona Professor and Chair of the Department of EBOH from 2012 to 2020. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Public Health from 2007 to 2013 and was elected fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2011. He currently chairs the International Society for Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention. He trained at Université de Montréal, McGill University and Stanford University. His research has focused on the epidemiology and prevention of chronic diseases in low-income populations and Aboriginal Nation communities, the epidemiology of risk factors in children and adolescents as well as the organization of public health services in Canada.
George Howard
Vice ChairGeorge Howard is a Distinguished Professor of Biostatistics at the UAB. His career has a dual focus of observational studies and multi-center randomized clinical trials. Heis a PI for the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) project, a U.S. national study to contributors to the excess stroke mortality among African Americans and Southerners. He the PI of the Statistical and Data Management Center for the Carotid Revascularization for Primary Prevention of Stroke Trial (CREST-2) contrasting carotid revascularization versus best medical management, and for the Coordinated, Collaborative, Comprehensive, Family-based, Integrated, and Technology-enabled Care (C3FIT)trial assessing the efficacy of coordination of post-stroke care.
D Prabhakaran
Past ChairProfessor Dorairaj Prabhakaran, MD, DM is a cardiologist and epidemiologist. He is distinguished Professor at the PHFI, and Executive Director,CCDC, New Delhi, India . He is Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and holds adjunct positions at the Emory,Harvard, McMaster and Simon Fraser Universities. He is Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. He was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Science by the University of Glasgow recently. He has authored over 600 manuscripts with H index of 103 ranking among the top 2% of worldwide researchers.His work includes mechanistic research to understand the increased propensity for cardiovascular diseasesamong Indians, developing low cost solutions for reducingchronic disease burden.
Wayne Rosamund
TreasurerWayne D. Rosamond, PhD, MS is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill (USA) and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UNC. Professor Rosamond’s research focuses on cardiovascular (CV) epidemiology with research expertise in communitysurveillance studies. Dr. Rosamond has collaborated on internationally with the WHO-MONICA Project, the Stroke Registry of the Canadian Stroke Network, and the Emerging Risk Factor Collaboration at the University of Cambridge, UK.Dr. Rosamond is Director of the CV Epidemiology T32 training program at UNC and Director of the Master of Science in Clinical Researchdegree program. He has chaired several national committees of the American Heart Association.
Kay-Tee Khaw
Secretary & Seminar CoordinatorKay-Tee Khaw is Emeritus Professor in the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK. She trained in medicine at Girton College, University of Cambridge and St. Mary’s Hospital, London, and in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with subsequent clinical and academic posts in the University of London and University of California San Diego. Her research interests are the maintenance of health in later life and the causes and prevention of chronic diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis, with a focus on nutrition and hormones with over 1300 publications, H index 174, and Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher 2011-2020. She was a founding principal investigator in the European Prospective Investigation in Cancer in Norfolk, part of a ten-country, half million participant research collaboration.
Darwin Labarthe
Seminar DirectorProf Darwin Labarthe is currently Professor of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, USA, and Co-Director, International Ten-Day Seminar on Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Prevention, ISCEP. His career in both academia and government has entailed major commitments to research on development of cardiovascular risk factors in children and adolescents, since the early 1980s. Hehaspursued this interest for the greater part of 30 years at The University of Texas Houston School of Public Health (1970-1999), 11 years at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000-2011), and in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University (2011-present).
Neil Poulter
Seminar Director
Professor N.Poulter qualified at St Mary’s Hospital, London, in 1974, following which he trained in General Medicine. He spent 5 years in Kenya co-ordinating a collaborative hypertension research programme in Nairobi. In 1985 he gained an MSc in Epidemiology with distinction at the LSHTM. Following this he was Co-PI of the WHO Oral Contraceptive case-control Study at UCL Medical School. In 1997 he was appointed Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at ICL, where he was the founding Director of the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit. He is an Honorary Consultant Physician at the Peart-Rose (CVD Prevention) Clinic based at Hammersmith Hospital, London.
He was President of the BHS from 2003-2005 and President of the ISH from 2016-2018. In 2008, he was elected as one of the Inaugural Senior Investigators of the NIHR and also a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2009.Hewas identified as beingamong the top 0.1% most cited researchers in the world (Web of Science Group Highly Cited Researcher 2019, 2020 and 2021).
He has played a senior management role in several international trials including the ASCOT, ADVANCE, EXSCEL, DEVOTE, LEADER and CREOLE trials; other research activities include the optimal investigation and management of essential hypertension, dyslipidaemia and type 2 diabetes.He is the CI of the May Measurement Month, an annual global BP screening campaign.
Arun Pulikkottil Jose
Communications OfficerDr Arun Pulikkottil Jose is Deputy Director of the Centre for Digital Health, Public Health Foundation of India. Dr Jose is a physician and has done his MD in Community Medicine. He holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management of Reproductive and Child Health Programmes from the IIPH and UNICEF, and is currently pursuing his PhD in Translational Research at Maastricht University, Netherlands.Dr Jose currently leads various digital health initiatives at the Centre for Digital Health. He is an ardent advocate for equity in healthcare, particularly digital health equity, and currently leads several initiatives in this regard.
Mohammed K. Ali
Council memberMohammed K. Ali MD, MSc, MBA is the William H. Foege Distinguished Professor of Global Health, Co-Director of the Emory Global Diabetes Research Center, a practicing primary care physician, and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at Emory University. Since 2010, he has served as a scientific advisor for the Division of Diabetes Translation at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He is a Rhodes Scholar with a productive academic record. He is one of the founding investigators of the Center for cArdio-metabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia (CARRS) cohort study. He has led several trials focused on evaluating the implementation, uptake, and effects of cardio-metabolic prevention, management, or policy interventions. He has led and contributed to synthesis reports for the World Health Organization, World Bank, and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has directed two NIH-Fogarty training programs and helped launch and grow the Emory Global Health Case Competition.
Lijing L. Yan
Council memberProfessor (with tenure) of Global Health, the Head of Non-communicable Chronic Diseases (NCDs) Research at the Global Health Research Center, Duke Kunshan University since July 2014. Also affiliated with Duke University, Northwestern University, Peking University, Wuhan University, and The George Institute for Global Health. A graduate of Peking University (BA in Sociology) and the University of California, Berkeley (MPH and PhD). Her main areas of research are cardio-metabolic disease prevention and control and healthy aging. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers some of which in leading medical journals such as JAMA, the Lancet, and Circulation. Her Google Scholar H-index is 56.
Hyeon Chang Kim
Council memberHyeon Chang Kim is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Director of Institute for Innovation in Digital Healthcare (IIDH), Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. He has been a faculty member of Yonsei University since 2004, and also worked as a visiting scholar at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL (2007-2009). His main research area is cardiovascular disease epidemiology and prevention. He has major roles in several epidemiologic studies in Korea and international collaboration projects including the Korea Medical Insurance Corporation (KMIC) study, the Korea Genome Epidemiology Study (KoGES), the Korean Urban Rural Elderly (KURE) study, the Korean Social Life Health and Aging Project (KSHAP), the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Etiology Research Center (CMERC), and the Asia Pacific Cohort Studies Collaboration (APCSC). He is also serving as editor-in-chief of Epidemiology and Health (epiH), chair of Hypertension Epidemiology Research Working Group of the Korean Society of Hypertension (KSH), and vice chair of the Korea Prevention and Service Task Force (KPSTF).
Moira K. Kapral
Council memberDr. Moira Kapral is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto and a staff physician at the Toronto General Hospital/University Health Network, where she also holds the Lillian Love Chair in Women’s Health. She is a senior scientist at ICES (formerly the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) and the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and is cross-appointed to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She performs health services research with a focus on addressing inequities in stroke care and outcomes. She is co-principal investigator of the Ontario Stroke Registry.
Russell Luepker
Council memberRussell Luepker is Mayo Professor Emeritus in the Division of Epidemiology and CommunityHealth in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota. He graduated fromthe University of Rochester Medical School and interned at University of California, San Diego. After three years research at Johns Hopkins University, he did a residency ininternal medicine and a fellowship in cardiology at Harvard. He obtained a degree in epidemiology at Harvard. He works in the field of cardiovascular disease epidemiology andprevention. He is chair of theFramingham Advisory Board and other national committees.
Andrzej Pająk
Council memberProf. Andrzej Pająk, MD. Specialist of internal diseases and public health, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Population Studies at the Jagiellonian University Medical College in Kraków, Poland. Participant of international research projects, as a member of steering committees and co-coordinator of Polish components of the study, including: The WHO MONICA Project,EUROASPIRE II-IV and EUROACTOIONstudies of European Society of Cardiology. Current research focus ispsychosocial determinants of cardiovascular disease and ageing. Participates in the on-going HAPIEE Study (Health, Alcohol and Psychosocial Factors In Eastern Europe)which is carried out in four East European countries. Author or coauthor ofover 450scientific publications.
Anushka Patel
Council member
Anushka Patel is the Vice-Principal Director & Chief Scientist at The George Institute for Global Health. She is a practicing cardiologist and Professor of Medicine at UNSW Sydney.Over the past 25 years, Dr Patel has engaged in epidemiological and clinical research, including large-scale cohort studies evaluating cardiovascular risk factors and clinical trials of cardiovascular preventive therapies. Early in her career,Dr Patel led the pivotal ADVANCE trial of vascular disease prevention in diabetes and has an ongoing focus on clinical trials on preventive drugs. Over the past decade her research has expanded into implementation science. This has included research on cardiovascular polypills and on supporting primary healthcare through digital technologies – both programs have directly contributed to commercial spin outs (George Medicines and George Health Technologies), which in 2020 were successful in a major >$50M capital raise through their parent company, George Health Enterprises. Dr Patel was awarded the Gustav Nossal Medal in Global Health by the Australian Academy of Science in 2018. Having previously been a Staff Specialist in Cardiology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney(1999 to 2010), she has since continued in part-time clinical practice (0.2 FTE).
In her role at The George Institute, Dr Patel has specific responsibility for oversight of the Institute’s research and impact strategy worldwide. Dr Patel has previously chaired the Australian Heart Foundation Research Committee, has been a Council member of the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences and is currently a member of the Australian NHMRC Research Committee, as well as its Health Research Impact Committee. She is currently a member of the Executive of the Australia and New Zealand Alliance for Cardiovascular Trials. Internationally, she is now or in the past has been Chair and/or a member of several advisory groups, including for WHO, Northwestern University, UK Joint Funders, Heart Health Research Center (China) and icddr,b (Bangladesh). Across all leadership roles, Dr Patel’s contributions have been around building capacity, infrastructure and collaboration for research and translation.
Adolfo Rubinstein
Council member
I am a physician graduated at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). I received a MScin Clinical Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 1996 and a PhD in Public Health from UBA in 2000. In 2002, I completed a postgraduate diploma in Health Economics at the University of York, UK. I am now full Professor of Family Medicine, Full Professor of Public Health and founder and former Director of the Master's program in Clinical Effectiveness of UBA.I am also Visiting professorof the Lown Cardiovascular program at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
I was founder and chairman of the Division of Family and Community Medicine at the Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires, one of the leading teaching hospital in Argentina, until 2010. I was the founder and Director-General of the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) since its creation in 2002 until March 2017 when I was appointed as secretary of Health Promotion, Prevention and control of the National Ministry of Health and then National Minister of Health. From 2009 to 2017, I was Director and PI of the Southern Cone American Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Health, (CESCAS/IECS), sponsored by NHLBI and PI of several projects funded by NIH.My research was focused on health policy research, cardiovascular epidemiology and implementation research to improve prevention and control of NCD in Argentina and Latin America. In 2018-2019, I was appointed as a Commissioner of the WHO Independent High-level Commission on NCDs. I have been PI and Director of studies awarded by national (Argentine MoH and research bodies), regional and international bodies such as US NIH (NHLBI, NCI and FIC), IDRC, PAHO, WHO, WB, IDB, Merck and Pfizer foundation, and others. I was also board member of city Cancer Challenge (C/CAN) from 2018 to 2022.
I have published more than 120 papers in peer review journals as well as textbooks and book chapters in health policy and health reform, clinical epidemiology, health services research and economic evaluations, focusing on NCD epidemiology, different aspects of the practice of primary care, and resource-allocation decision making.I am an investigator of the National Council of Scientific Research of Argentina (CONICET).
During my term as a Minister of Health of Argentina, from 2017 through 2019, my priorities were focused on the expansion of Universal Health Strategy, particularly for uninsured population, prevention and control of NCD and childhood obesity, and regulation of price and coverage of innovative drugs. In 2020, I returned to my home institution, IECS, to create the Center for Implementation and Innovation in Health Policies (CIIPS), where I am its current Director. CIIPS is working on implementation of different programs and policies for organizations and governments in Argentina and Latin America. https://www.iecs.org.ar/en/ciips/
Dr Ghadeer Aljuraiban
Council memberDr Ghadeer Aljuraiban is an Associate Professor at the Department of Community Health Sciences, King Saud University. She has a BSc and an MSc degree in clinical nutrition, and has successfully completed her PhD in nutrition epidemiology, specifically, on macro/micronutrient intake and the risk of cardiovascular diseases, at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Imperial College London (2015), where she was trained under a world-renowned team of experts with extensive experience in research on diet and its relation with hypertension among the general population.
Dr Ntobeko Ntusi
Council memberNtobeko Ntusi is a cardiologist and a Professor of Medicine, currently appointed as the Chair and Head of Medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Groote Schuur Hospital, where he also provides the Clinical Lead for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance and runs a specialised heart failure clinic. He is a Principal Investigator based at the Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research in Africa and the Cape Universities Body Imaging Centre as well as a Collaborating Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in Africa. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Heart Journal, an Association Editor of Circulation. He serves on Editorial Boards for numerous international journals and provides regular peer review for granting agencies globally. He obtained a BSc in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Haverford College, USA followed by an MBChB from UCT. He obtained a DPhil in Cardiovascular Medicine and an MD in Cardiology from the Universities of Oxford and Cape Town, respectively. He completed his clinical training in Cardiology and obtained a Certificate of Cardiology from the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa. He has been actively engaged and contributed to improved understanding of cardiomyopathy, inflammatory heart disease, HIV-associated cardiovascular disease and heart failure in South Africa and globally.
If you are an ISCEP member and are interested in joining the Council, please contact us.