Dr Patricia Schlagenhauf

Professor and Scientific Group Leader at the University of Zürich Centre for Travel Medicine.
Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Travellers’ Health at the Institute for Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention UZH, Zürich, Switzerland.  

Her research areas are travel medicine, travellers’ malaria, epidemiology and surveillance of travel-related infections, medications/vaccines for the prevention of travel-associated illness, development of digital tools for travel medicine with a focus on the ITIT (Illness Tracking in Travellers) project that received Swiss National Foundation funding in 2020. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the ECCMID Travel Medicine Group and of the Swiss Expert Group for Travel Medicine and supports WHO in several working groups including chairing the WHO Consultation on International Travel and Health (ITH) Bangkok, Thailand 3/2018 and chairing Risk mapping the international spread of vector-borne disease via air travel, Geneva 7/2018. Formerly European Senior Editor at the Lancet, she is now Editor-in-Chief of Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease.

In travel health, surveillance networks she is active as the Zürich, GeoSentinel Site Director since 2004, in the EuroTravNet Steering Committee since 2009, and she served in the GeoSentinel Global Leadership Team from 2015 – 2018, where she chaired the “Tracking-Communications” group with the goal of tracking illness in travellers, defining trends and initiating a fast chain of response to sentinel infection reports. Currently she is PI of COVID-19 projects with the Swiss Army including the follow up, by App, of recruits who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020 and evaluation of sequelae and re-infection rates.

Her publication list includes more than 170 travel medicine papers and books such as "Travelers' Malaria" (BC Decker 2001, 2nd edition 2008) „Infectious Diseases – a Geographic Guide (Wiley 2011, 2^nd edition 2016) and "PDQ handbook of Travelers' Malaria" (BC Decker 2005).