Clinical Epidemiology

Supporting and promoting the conduct of descriptive and predictive epidemiological studies using individual or aggregated data. The Clinical Epidemiology WG is committed to enhancing networking by welcoming researchers from around the world and creating mutual collaboration.

Activities

  • The Clinical Epidemiology Working Group is developing a research project on Post-COVID-19 condition in low-and-middle-income countries. Read more about the project
  • In June 2022, the group held a special open meeting for a presentation by Dr Tanvir Ahmed and colleagues from SAJIDA Foundation about Socio-demographic profile, post-recovery physical and mental health consequences amongst patients of COVID-19 in Bangladesh. Watch the recording

Publication

Written by working group members linked to or informed by coalition efforts.

Resources

Selected and recommended by the working group

Browse all resources selected by the coalition’s topic-specific groups

Webinars

Post-COVID-19 condition: Challenges for patient care in low- and middle-income countries

Challenges in conducting clinical research in resource-limited settings: Experiences during COVID-19

 

If you would like to submit a query to the Clinical Epidemiology working group, please send us an email.

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Working group members

Support Group Member

Dr Lucas Guimarães Abreu is a Professor at the Department of Child’s and Adolescent’s Oral Health of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Federal University of Minas Gerais), Brazil. He holds an MSc and a PhD in dentistry. Professor Abreu has a wide array of interests in epidemiology with a proven track record in research and teaching. He has published over 110 manuscripts in peer-reviewed and indexed journals and has lectured at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

Agustín Ciapponi is a Magister of Clinical Effectiveness and a Doctor of Public Health at the University of Buenos Aires. After several systematic reviews, he became coordinator of the local Cochrane Center and, subsequently, as Director of Cochrane Argentina. He is also editor of Clinical Cochrane Answers and Independent investigator of CONICET. He carries out teaching activities as Assistant Professor of Public Health at the School of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina and is Director of postgraduate courses for ‘Systematic Review & Meta-analysis’ and ‘Evidence Based Medicine’. He is Editor of the journal ‘Archivos de Medicina Familiar y General,’ and is a member of the Editorial Board ‘EVIDENCIA en la práctica ambulatoria’ (a bi-monthly Spanish EBM journal). His major expertise is in the field of the Systematic Review & Meta-analysis. Agustín has authored over 90 publications in peer reviewed scientific journals and books, including four Cochrane systematic reviews.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

Anna Mia Ekström holds a Clinical Professorship in Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology and has 20 years of leadership, networking and international project management. She leads the research group Global & Sexual health (GloSH) <https://ki.se/en/gph/global-and-sexual-health-glosh at KI)> in Stockholm. With over 40 multi-disciplinary researchers, this group is also home to Prof. Hans Rosling’s teaching legacy. Her research focuses on HIV, infectious disease outbreaks (COVID-19, Zika, Ebola), harm reduction, Sexual and Reproductive Health & Rights (SRHR) research, gender-based violence, social norms, and program evaluation. Ongoing studies related to COVID-19 include: Health, social and poverty effects of restrictions on vulnerable populations’ access to prevention and treatment of HIV, NCDs, mental health, harm reduction and SRHR services, prevalence of GBV, alcohol & drug use, and food insecurity in Uganda, Myanmar and South Africa. Population survey of the COVID-19 effects on gender norms and young women’s economic empowerment in India, in collaboration with World Values Survey, UCSD and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. COVID-19 disease spread among family members on non-hospitalized patients in Sweden.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

I am a medical doctor, a qualified and experienced public health specialist, and an epidemiologist. I have 20 years of work experience in teaching/mentoring, disease surveillance, outbreak response, district/provincial/national health systems, and international organizations. I am currently employed with TEPHINET USA and working as Technical Coordinator for FELTP-Pakistan, National Lead for Disease Surveillance and Response Units (DSRUs) as well as the focal person for FELTP-Frontline Trainings since October 2019. I am also part of the Global Burden of Disease collaborator network, the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), and work with the University of Washington USA as a collaborator. In addition, I am a reviewer for public health journals and international conferences and presented research work at different international conferences. I have attended multiple international short trainings and have published in national and international journals. Lastly, I am actively involved in the national COVID-19 surveillance and response activities since February 2020 in Pakistan and am a member of the WHO expert consultant roster for Polio and the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) since 2015.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Co-Chair

Professor Maude is Head of the Epidemiology Department at Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, Bangkok, Thailand and Associate Professor in Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford, Honorary Consultant Physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and a Visiting Scientist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, USA. He has worked at Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit since 2007.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

I am an Associate Professor and physician scientist at the University of Virginia. My research is focused on critical illness and sepsis in resource-limited settings. I am particularly interested in the identification and management of sepsis in people living with HIV. The majority of my work is done in partnership with colleagues at the Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Mbarara, Uganda where I am also a Professor in the Department of Medicine. My research has led to inclusion in a sepsis working group at the World Health Organization which created guidelines and a research protocol for the treatment of sepsis in resource-limited settings across the world. I am interested in contributing to the knowledge of the clinical epidemiology of COVID-19 in resource-limited settings including sub-Saharan Africa.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

Graduate in Dentistry from the Faculty of Dentistry of the Federal University of Goiás (2002), Specialization in Dentistry in Collective Health (UFG – 2003), MSc in Collective Health by Botucatu Medical School UNESP (2005) and Master in Gerontology by Faculty of Medical Sciences of UNICAMP (2009). He completed a doctorate in Public Health at the Faculty of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP-USP), area of concentration in Epidemiology (2009). He has experience in the area of Collective Health, with emphasis on Epidemiology, working mainly in the following subjects: Public Health, elderly health, gerontology, collective oral health, epidemiology, biostatistics and spatial analysis in health – geoprocessing. He is a Senior Researcher in Public Health at the Aggeu Magalhães Institute – Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (IAM – Fiocruz) and Adjunct Professor of the Area of Social Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE).

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Coordinator

Dr. Juan Guillermo Perez is a Colombian physician, epidemiologist, and bioethicist. During his 13-year career, he contributed to the design and conduct of medical research in a Latin-American-recognized Cardiovascular Hospital. In particular, he was involved in multi-centric clinical trials funded by the Ministry of Health and the Pharmaceutical Industry, as well as collaborative cardiovascular research integrating different LATAM countries. He helped with the development of National Clinical Guidelines for different topics as a research synthesis specialist (for the management of people living with COVID-19, HIV, Hypertension, and Asthma). As an epidemiologist, he integrates bioethical reflections into research projects. This vision helped him to contribute to the creation of the Institutional IRB at the Universidad del Rosario and the Latin-American Network for Research Integrity (RIIC). Working for the pharmaceutical industry complemented his research training before starting the doctoral program in epidemiology in the United States, as it gave him a broader picture of the research efforts required to understand health priorities, using implementation and translational sciences.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

Giordano Pérez-Gaxiola is a Paediatrician with an MSc in Evidence-based medicine and is Director of the Cochrane in Mexico.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

Richard Ssekitoleko is a physician and epidemiologist with over ten years’ experience in research and lecturing internal medicine and four years’ experience in managing public health emergencies, disease outbreak preparedness, response and recovery. Richard has been at the forefront of averting and controlling different epidemics in various African countries including the largest Ebola outbreak in world history (2014-2015 in West Africa), Meningitis and Cholera outbreaks in Imatong state, South Sudan in 2016, the 2019 Ebola outbreak in Kasese district, Uganda and now the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda.He has worked in various capacities and in different organisations including; the African Union, USAID, WHO, and IGAD and has participated in designing Uganda’s current Viral Haemorrhagic fever (VHF) national guidelines and standards. He has conducted emergency preparedness and readiness assessments for many districts across Uganda. Presently he is conducting Ebola preparedness and COVID-19 response activities in the South-Western Uganda districts for Surveillance, Case Management, Infection Prevention, and Control Pillars. As an experienced researcher and lecturer of epidemiology, his research work has resulted in publications in a number of peer reviewed journals Passionate about mentoring and sharing knowledge with health workers and communities, researching and training on infectious diseases, general medicine, and epidemiology, he also enjoys meeting new people and experiencing new cultures.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

• Co-Founder, CEO & Director of the IHCAI (Institute International Health Central American Institute Foundation), since 1988 (affiliated to Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut, USA)
• Director of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Centre (Central America and Spanish Caribbean)
• IDB-DIME Collaborative Network for decision-making of high financial impact medicines in Latin America since 2017
• Senior Consultant PAHO-WHO, Washington, D.C.
• Public Health Journal, Editorial committee member since 2017
• HL7 (Health Level Seven) – FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)
• COKA (COVID Knowledge Accelerator), USA, since 2019
• Scientific Committee Member University of Connecticut School of Medicine, since 2002
• Adjunct associate professor, community health and research, Harvard Medical School
• Off-Campus Adjunct associate professor, Harvard Medical School. (ME 518 Rural Medicine and Nutrition in Latin America), since 1999

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Co-Chair

Juan Carlos Villar, MD, PhD is a Colombian internist with training in preventive cardiology and clinical epidemiology at McMaster University in Canada. He is currently professor of medicine at Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga (his home town), where he teaches evidence based medicine and leads a masters program in health research methods to produce or use knowledge (two different paths). He is also head of the Research Center at Fundación Cardioinfantil, Instituto de Cardiología, Bogotá (the nation´s capital). This is a 300-bed university hospital and referral center for cardiovascular disease. He has served as the leading investigator for Colombia in a number of international trials. He has also authored or co-authored a number of systematic reviews and was the leader of the national guideline for hypertension in Colombia. He has a long standing interest for Chagas disease and is currently conducting a number of clinical trials in this field. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he has been editor of “Recados”, a series of rapid reviews/evidence-based recommendations for a network of hospitals that are building a patient registry in order to conduct collaborative studies.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
Working Group Member

Dr Paul Yonga is the Chair and Clinical Epidemiologist at Fountain Projects and Research Office (FOPRO), as well as a Consultant Infectiologist and Tropical/Travel Medicine Specialist at Fountain Health Care Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. He received his MBChB in 2012 from Kampala International University in Uganda, then undertook his Internal Medicine training under the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (MRCP) in the United Kingdom. He then specialized in Infectious Diseases under various units in Europe (Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium; European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Stockholm, Sweden; and Research Centre Borstel-Leibniz Lung Centre, Borstel, Germany) and Canada (British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, Vancouver) with additional training in high-resolution anoscopy (HRA) at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre-AMC, the Netherlands, and travel medicine from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He also holds a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) with a focus on Tropical Medicine and International Health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium, with additional training in qualitative research from the Centre for International Health, University of Bergen, Norway; and clinical epidemiology from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His clinical and research interests are in general and emerging infectious diseases, HIV co-infections and co-morbidities, and travel medicine.

Coalition working group:
Clinical Epidemiology
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We are looking for dedicated individuals and institutions who are eager to contribute their expertise and commitment to fast-track research in infectious diseases with potential for epidemics and pandemics, as well as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), specific to low-resource settings.

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