Prof. Claudio E. Lanata
Senior researcher and Professor, Instituto de Instigación nutricional, Lima, Peru
Dr Lanata is a Senior Researcher at the Nutritional Research Institute in Lima, Peru, which he joined in 1983, after returning from his post-graduate training in the United States of America (USA). In 1977 he obtained his MD from the Peruvian University Cayetano Heredia. He then went to the USA to do post-graduate training in Internal Medicine at St. Vincent’s Medical Centre (Bridgeport, CT; 1997-1980), which was followed by a fellowship on infectious diseases at the Department of Medicine of the University of Maryland (Baltimore, MD, between 1980 and 1982). In 1982, he became a Research Fellow in Geographical Medicine at the School of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University, and in 1983 he obtained a Master Degree in Public Health from the School of Hygiene and Public Health of the Johns Hopkins University. He is in the process of obtaining his Dr.M degree at the Peruvian University Cayetano Heredia.
On his return to Peru, he has led extensive research in the fields of child health and nutrition, mainly on diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases, micronutrients and vaccine development. More recently he has been involved in a large quality assurance programme that was able to improve the quality of care of maternal and perinatal health in 2500 health facilities covering half of Peru territory, with a significant reduction on maternal mortality in the areas intervened, and was responsible to start a follow-up study involving a cohort of 2000 children and their families representing Peru during 16 years, to study the relationship of poverty, health, education and policy issues in this area. He is currently an adviser to the Peruvian Minister of Health on research, health systems and nutrition programmes in Peru.
His work has resulted in one book, 22 chapters, 36 abstracts and more than 80 journal publications, most of them in major international journals. He reviews articles and writes commentaries in Lancet and other major public health journals.
For many years, he has been an active collaborator with WHO and PAHO, where he has participated and continues to be part of several expert committees on diarrhoeal diseases and vaccine development. He has done several international consultancies for several research projects. Between 2001 and 2006 he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, today known as Centre for Health and Population Research. He is a member of the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) as well as the Foodborne Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) of WHO, where he is conducting systematic reviews of the literature on diarrhoea epidemiology and its impact on the burden of childhood diseases in the world and WHO regions.
He is an Associate of the Department of International Health of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg’s School of Public Health and Clinical Assistance Professor of the Department of Medicine in the University of Maryland. Likewise, he is Honorary Professor of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a founder member of the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative Foundation in Switzerland and the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences' new School of Medicine.