Project
Information
Project Team: Coordination
London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
Website: http://www.lshtm.ac.uk
·
Project Leader: Professor
Martin McKee
Martin McKee is Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical
Medicine, and Research Director of the European Observatory on Health Systems
and Policies. He manages a large team of researchers studying the health
effects of political transition in Europe and heads the WHO
collaborating Centre on Health of Societies in Transition. Martin.Mckee@lshtm.ac.uk
·
Scientific Coordinator: Dr Joceline Pomerleau
Joceline Pomerleau is a
lecturer at the London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She completed her BSc and MSc in Nutrition at the Université de Montréal (Canada), and her PhD in
Epidemiology at the University of Western Ontario (Canada). She joined the
LSHTM in 1995 to collaborate in investigating ethnic differences in health
determinants. She then joined the European Centre on Health of Societies in
Transition in 1999. Her main research interest is in nutritional epidemiology,
the lifestyle determinants of health in countries of the former Soviet Union, and the health
aspects of low fruit and vegetable intake. She will be the Scientific
Coordinator of the EURO-PREVOB project.
Joceline.Pomerleau@lshtm.ac.uk
·
Administrative Coordinator: Pamela Harling
Pamela Harling has a first degree in Natural Sciences and qualifications in
Ecology and Information Science. She has worked mainly on grants administration
for environmental projects and was administrator for a 2.5 million euro
Framework 5 Network of Excellence, coordinated by The University of Reading. She
has also carried out financial reporting and project start up for European
Commission funded projects at The Natural History Museum, London and Queen Mary University, London.
Pamela.Harling@lshtm.ac.uk
·
Research Fellow: Dr Cécile Knai
Cécile Knai has a Master's
degree in Public Health (Nutrition) from the University of California, Berkeley. She worked for
several years at the WHO Regional Office for Europe in Copenhagen mainly in food and
nutrition policy. She has recently been awarded a PhD from the London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine on a qualitative risk analysis of soft drink consumption as a
risk factor for childhood obesity in Denmark and Latvia. Other projects
include work on socioeconomic inequalities and obesity and on the promotion of
fruit and vegetable consumption.
Cecile.Knai@lshtm.ac.uk
Project Team: Partners
Note: The original EURO-PREVOB Consortium
also included the National Centre for Preventive Medicine (NCPM), Russian Federation, among its
partners.
Aileen Robertson
Aileen Robertson is a lecturer at the
SUHR'S University College, Copenhagen Denmark. She completed her
BSc, MSc and PhD degrees in Nutrition at the University of
Aberdeen, Scotland. She was Regional Adviser for Nutrition and Food Security at
the WHO European Regional Office from 1995 to 2004.
Francesco Branca (lead
scientist during Apr 2007-June 2008)
Francesco Branca
is the Regional Advisor for Nutrition at the World Health Organization Regional
Office for Europe. Among other areas, he has been involved
in the design, management and evaluation of public health nutrition programmes,
at different steps of the project cycle, with the aim to develop evidence-based
guidelines for nutrition actions, as well as in the design and implementation
of several studies on the effects of food and nutrients on human health at the
different stages of the life cycle.
Trudy Wijnhoven (lead
scientist from July 2008)
Trudy Wijnhoven has
been working since 1996 for the World Health Organization (WHO) at various duty
stations, and currently is the technical officer, nutrition surveillance, at
the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Her main
responsibilities are: monitoring progress in Member States on improving
nutrition and physical activity and preventing obesity in the WHO European
Region; development and coordination of the WHO European Childhood Obesity
Surveillance Initiative; review the data on the nutritional status of children,
adolescents and adults in the WHO European Region. She has a Bachelor's degree
in Dietetics (Arnhem-Nijmegen University of
Professional Education, Netherlands) and Master's degrees in Human Nutrition (Wageningen University, Netherlands) and Epidemiology
(London School of Hygiene &
Tropical Medicine, UK).
Marc Suhrcke
Marc Suhrcke is
now working in the School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice at the
University of East Anglia (UK). His previous professional experiences include
the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (Florence), the Hamburg
Institute for International Economics, the European Bank for Reconstruction
& Development, European Commission, the Center
for European Policy Studies (Brussels), and the University of Hamburg. He holds a PhD in
Economics from the University of Hamburg. His main areas of
research include the social and economic determinants and consequences of
health, the economic implications of non-communicable disease, and the economic
rationale for public policy intervention to combat chronic disease.
Nicole Darmon
Nicole Darmon is
a Research Associate at INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical
Research). In 1990, she obtained an Engineering Degree (Industrial Food
Biochemistry) from the Conservatoire National des Arts et
Métiers and, in 1997, a PhD degree (PhysioPathology of Human Nutrition) from the University of Paris-VII Jussieu, in Paris, France. In 1998, she
joined the Nutritional Epidemiology Unit of INSERM in Paris, where she
conducted nutritional surveys in vulnerable populations, such as homeless and
food-aid recipients. She has developed an innovative approach, based on linear
programming, to studying the feasibility and the cost of nutritional
recommendations. In 2005, she joined the INSERM Unit of Marseille, internationally
recognized for its expertise in micronutrient nutrition, particularly phytomicronutrient and lipids, where she is developing new
tools for increasing the quality of individual diets, based on diet
optimization techniques and for evaluating the nutritional quality of
individual foods, based on nutrient profiling approaches. Nicole Darmon has gained international recognition for her
innovative work on the impact of economic constraints on food choices and diet
quality. She is one of the few nutritionists in the world who has an in-depth
understanding of the modelling procedures for diet optimization.
Gülden Pekcan
Gülden Pekcan is Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at Hacettepe University, Turkey. She is the Head
of Community Nutrition Division in Department of Nutrition and Dietetics. She
has participated in and coordinated a number of national and international
collaborative studies as a nutritionist. She acted as an expert consultant in
the development of the National Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition, and is a
member of several advisory and scientific committees and councils for national
programmes on nutrition. Her main interests are; nutritional assessment,
nutritional anthropometry, public health nutrition, and food and nutrition
policies.
Harry Rutter
Harry Rutter is a
consultant in public health medicine; he is director of the National Obesity
Observatory (hosted by the South East Public Health Observatory); and an
honorary senior clinical lecturer in the Department of Public Health and Primary
Care, University of Oxford. He is a member of
the Department of Health Expert Panel on obesity, and was on the management
group of the Foresight obesities project. He sits on the steering committee of
the European Health Enhancing Physical Activity network; and jointly led a WHO
project on economic evaluation of environmental interventions promoting
physical activity. He sits on the boards of the Milton Keynes South Midlands
Architecture and Built Environment Centre and the Parliamentary Advisory Council
on Transport Safety. He has a broad interest in the relationships between all
aspects of the built environment and health, in particular the health benefits
of walking and cycling.
Giuseppe Maiani
Giuseppe Maiani,
senior researcher, is the Director of the Unit of Human Nutrition at the
National Institute for Food and Nutrition Research (INRAN), Rome, Italy. His research
activities focus on the field of nutritional epidemiology and on the
investigation of the mechanisms of intestinal absorption and the
bioavailability of natural compounds that can act as antioxidants (carotenoids and flavonoids). His
research includes analyses of the relationship between dietary habits and
antioxidant status in humans and its subsequent impact on human health. He is
also currently involved in national and international projects and acts as
national delegate in the COST Action 926.
Iveta Pudule
Iveta Pudule has been working since 1997 in the Centre of Health
Economics (formerly, Health Promotion State Agency and then the Public Health
Agency). She graduated from the St Petersburg Medical Institute of Sanitation
and Hygiene in 1982 and completed her MSc in Health Promotion at Bergen University, Norway, in 1996. She has
been involved in several research projects as principal investigator,
including: the WHO Nutrition Survey in Latvia in 1997, the Health Behavior Monitoring Surveys of Latvian Adult Population
since 1998, the Health Behavior Study of School-aged
Children (HBSC) - a cross-national research study
conducted in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for Europe since 2002,
the WHO EUROHIS survey in Latvia in 2001-2002, the WHO Global Youth Tobacco
survey in Latvia, the WHO World Health Survey in Latvia in 2002, NORBAGREEN
2002 study of consumption of vegetables, potatoes, fruit, bread and fish in the
Nordic and Baltic countries.
Zuzana Brazdova
Zuzana Brazdova is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Nutrition
at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. She has
participated in a number of national and international nutrition projects
focusing on nutritional assessment, development of methods of assessment,
children's nutrition in emergency, public health nutrition, and food and
nutrition policy. Her special interest is in dietary guidelines background,
design, implementation and evaluation.
Aida Filipovic Hadziomeragic
Aida Filipovic Hadziomeragic is Head of the Nutrition Unit of the Public
Health Institute of Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and a lecturer at the Faculty of
Nursing, University of Sarajevo. She is a medical
doctor, a specialist in hygiene and nutrition, and is responsible for
implementing and monitoring the impact of public health policies related to
food and nutrition and physical activity. She has been involved in the
preparation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Food and Nutrition
Action Plan. She is WHO national counterpart for nutrition..
Mojca Gabrijelcic
Mojca Gabrijelcic is Head of the Health Promotion Centre at the Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia. Her special interest are nutrition and health promotion, areas where she
has been mostly involved in research and programme development, especially for
children and adolescents. She also participated in the national nutrition
policy development. She is WHO national counterpart for nutrition and a member
of the Nutrition and Physical Activity Network of the EU. She was a member of
the drafting group of the WHO Charter on Counteracting Obesity.
Lida Lhotska
Lida Lhotska, a Czech national, carried out her undergraduate
and postgraduate studies (PhD in Applied Anthropology) at Charles University, in the Czech Republic. After her
studies, she worked at the National Institute of Public Health, being
responsible for nation-wide anthropological surveys of children and adolescents
and was a team leader for the community-based component of a USAID-supported
Multifactor Cardiovascular Risk Reduction Program in the Czech Republic. She also lectured
at the 3rd Medical School of Charles University on infant and young child
feeding and applied physical anthropology. In the period 1994-2001 she worked
as a Senior Advisor for UNICEF in New York (Infant Feeding
and Care, Nutrition Section). Since 2001, she has been working for the Geneva
Infant Feeding Association, a member of IBFAN, where she holds the position of
Regional Coordinator for IBFAN Europe with the overall responsibility for IBFAN
European network coordination. She works on two thematic areas: infant feeding
in emergencies and HIV and infant feeding. In 2002-2004, she was a member of
the EU project team that developed the Blueprint for Action on Protection,
Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding in Europe, currently piloted
in eight EU countries.
Eric Brunner
Eric Brunner is Reader in Epidemiology and Public
Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College
London. He obtained his PhD in epidemiology on the Whitehall II study, a large
cardiovascular cohort study (now in its twentieth year of follow-up) that
focuses on the analysis of social inequalities in cardiovascular disease. He is
a senior investigator, and heads the nutrition component of the study. He has
published over 100 papers and contributed as author or editor to ten books, and
is co-director of a Master's course in Health and Society: Social Epidemiology.
He is an editor of the Cochrane Heart Group and has recently completed two
systematic reviews, one on the effectiveness of individual dietary advice and
another on population/community approaches to dietary change. A further recent
paper demonstrates the importance of adequate physical activity as early as the
fifth and sixth decades for maintaining physical functioning in retirement. He
has contributed to several high-level policy processes, including the EU-sponsored
EURODIET project and the Royal Society's review of the safety of genetically
modified plants. His research is funded by the Department of Health, Medical
Research Council, British Heart Foundation and World Cancer Research Fund. He
is an honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health.
Sharon Friel
Sharon Friel is a
social and nutritional epidemiologist and has worked in the area of public
health nutrition and inequalities in health since 1992. She is currently the
Principal Research Fellow for the global Commission on Social Determinants of
Health, based at the International Institute for Society and Health, University
College London. She is also a Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology
and Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, where she is
currently working as a consultant to the World Cancer Research Fund diet and
cancer policy report. Prior to this, she worked for many years in the
Department of Health Promotion, National University of Ireland, Galway, as well as being
Chair of the Irish Health Promotion Association for four years. Much of her
work is concerned with the interface between research, policy and practice in
matters relating to international and national level social determinants of
inequalities in health, in particular those relating to diet. She has
undertaken extensive research in the areas of social determinants of health
inequalities, socio-environmental determinants of dietary habits, food poverty,
obesity, population health surveillance and health promotion policy and
practice.
Advisory Board
Dr
Tim Lobstein
Director of the
Childhood Obesity Programme, International Obesity TaskForce,
London
Susanne
Løgstrup
Director of the
European Heart Network (EHN), Brussels
Professor
Brian Martin
Swiss Federal
Office of Sport FOSPO, Chairman of HEPA-Europe Steering Committee
Dr
Francesca Racioppi
WHO European Centre
for Environment and Health, Rome Division
Dr
Liselotte Schäfer Elinder
Director of the Stockholm Centre for Public
Health, Stockholm
EURO-PREVOB is an EU project funded
under the FP6 Programme.
