NDPH Seminar - Measuring premature mortality and disability from cardiovascular diseases worldwide: Evidence from the Global Burden of Disease Study

Alan Lopez, MS, PhD, is a Melbourne Laureate Professor and the Rowden-White Chair of Global Health and Burden of Disease Measurement at the University of Melbourne. He is also Director of the Global Burden of Disease Group in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health. He is an Affiliate Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

He held prior appointments as Professor of Medical Statistics and Population Health, Professor of Global Health, and Head of the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland from 2003 to 2012. Prior to joining the University, he worked at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland for 22 years where he held a series of technical and senior managerial posts including Chief Epidemiologist in WHO’s Tobacco Control Program, Manager of WHO’s Program on Substance Abuse, Director of the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Unit, and Senior Science Advisor to the Director-General.

Professor Lopez is a highly cited author whose publications have received worldwide acclaim for their importance and influence in health and medical research. He is the co-author with Christopher Murray of the seminal Global Burden of Disease Study (1996), which has greatly influenced debates about priority setting and resource allocation in health. He is the co-author with Sir Richard Peto of the Peto-Lopez method, which is widely used to estimate tobacco-attributable mortality to support policy action.

In June of 2016, Dr. Lopez was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his remarkable contributions to health science and the advancement of public health in developing countries.