Meet the Executive Council
Daniel Kim
Founder & President
Daniel Kim, M.D., Dr.P.H., is a Professor of Social Epidemiology in the School of Community Health and Behavioral Sciences at Northeastern University. His research broadly encompasses the social and economic determinants of population health. He has received several grants on the social determinants of health from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and has published a variety of studies on the area-level effects of social determinants of health. He co-edited the textbook Social Capital and Health (Springer Press) with Ichiro Kawachi and S.V. Subramanian, and is author of the recent book New Horizons in Modeling and Simulation for Social Epidemiology and Public Health (Wiley & Sons, 2021) that highlights applications of modeling and simulation to public health and social epidemiology. He completed a medical degree and residency program in public health & preventive medicine at the University of Toronto, and earned his doctorate in public health (majoring in social epidemiology) from Harvard University. He also presently serves as an Associate Editor for the international journal Preventive Medicine and on the editorial boards of the journals PLOS Global Public Health and Social Science & Medicine – Population Health.
Tarani Chandola
Secretary-General
Tarani Chandola, D.Phil. is a Professor of Medical Sociology. He is the head of the department of Sociology and the director of the Methods Hub and Social Science Research Centre in the Faculty of the Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. He joined the Department of Sociology in August 2021 and was formerly the Head of Department of Social Statistics at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the ESRC Strategic Advisory Network Strategic Advisory Network and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He was formerly the editor-in-chief of the journal Sociology, the flagship journal of the British Sociological Association, and is currently an international advisory board member of the journal Sociology of Health & Illness. He was a panel member of the Sociology Unit of Assessment for the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, UK. He obtained his DPhil in Sociology from Nuffield College, University of Oxford in 1998.
His research is primarily on the social determinants of health, focusing on health inequalities and psychosocial factors, and the analysis of longitudinal cohort studies. His major research contributions have been on understanding the role of chronic stress related biomarkers in relation to psychosocial stressors such as poor working conditions. He is currently researching HPA-axis biomarkers associated with social isolation, loneliness and (resilience to) chronic pain.
Mauricio Barreto
Regional Councilor, South America
Maurício L. Barreto, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. (University of London) is an Emeritus University Professor at the Federal University of Bahia and a Senior Investigator of Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), always based and working in its home State, Bahia- Brazil. His research in epidemiology and collective health covers different topics, with a great focus on the social and environmental determinants of health, health inequalities, and the impact of social, environmental and health policies and interventions on population´s health. He has published over 650 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals. He has taught, supervised and mentored undergraduate, and master's, and Ph.D. students and postdocs throughout his life. He is the founder and head of the Center of Data and Knowledge Integration for Health (Cidacs, Fiocruz) and co-director of the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Social and Environmental Determinants of Health Inequalities. His current major research program is around the 100 million Brazilian Cohort, particularly investigating the impact of poverty reduction policies on health, using the linkage of large administrative Brazilian databases. He is an elected Fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Luisa Borrell
Regional Councilor, North America
Luisa N. Borrell, D.D.S., Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH), New York, NY. She is a social epidemiologist with a research interest on the role of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic position, and neighborhood effects as social determinants of health. Her work on Hispanics’/Latinos’ racial identity brings attention to the need for disaggregated analyses by race as Hispanics/Latinos are a heterogeneous group with a mix of European, Native American and African ancestry. She also has expertise in research methods and analyses of large and spatially-linked datasets. Dr. Borrell has published over 190 articles and invited editorials. She has received funding from the National institutes of Health and has served both as a PI and as Co-PI. In addition, her work has also been funded through the Columbia Center for the Active Life of Minority Elder, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Columbia University Diversity Initiative Award and PSC-CUNY Awards. Dr. Borrell is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine. She has a Doctor in Dental Surgery and a Master's in Public Health, from Columbia University, New York, NY, as well as doctorate in Epidemiological Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Finally, Dr. Borrell has an extensive record in mentoring master and doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows as well as junior faculty.
Tania King
Regional Councilor, Australia
Tania King, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Social Epidemiologist at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, at the University of Melbourne. She uses causally focussed quantitative methods to understand social and structural determinants of health inequities across the life-course. Specific focusses of her work include: 1) gender equality and norms as determinants of health outcomes; 2) paid and unpaid work arrangements and conditions, particularly unpaid care; 3) mental health and suicide. Tania currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, and a University of Melbourne Dame Kate Campbell Fellowship.
Naoki Kondo
Regional Councilor, Asia
Naoki Kondo, M.D., Ph.D. has been a Professor of the Department of Social Epidemiology, Graduate School of Medicine and School of Public Health, Kyoto University, since September 2020. His primary research themes are social determinants of health. He is the vice chief investigator of the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study, a cohort study following up more than 200,000 older adults nationwide in Japan. JAGES initiative has investigated the community and social environments that promote the preventive measures for non-communicable diseases and healthy and equitable longevity. His recent study focuses on how to address health inequality in community settings, conducting intervention studies with local and central governments, utilizing “community-diagnosis” data. Professor Kondo is a member of the Clinical Consortium on Health Ageing and a core member of the Global Network on Long-term Care, World Health Organization. He holds multiple roles as committee members and advisors for Parliamentary Groups and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan.
Anne Kouvonen
Regional Councilor, Europe
Anne Kouvonen, Ph.D. is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is also Honorary Professor of Social Epidemiology and Social Sciences in the Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). Anne’s research focuses on the social determinants of health. In particular, she has been investigating employee mental health and socioeconomic inequalities of health. Her other current interests regard aging; migrant health; digitalization and social inclusion of migrants. Her research involves the application of social epidemiological methods and administrative record linkage as well as large-scale prospective survey designs and qualitative research.
Rebecca Lacey
Regional Councilor, Europe
Becca Lacey, Ph.D. is a lifecourse social epidemiologist based at the Population Health Research Institute, St George’s, University of London. Becca’s research focuses mainly on how aspects of the early family social environment influence mental health across the lifecourse. She currently leads two programmes of work. One on caregiving (particularly young and young adult carers) and health. The second on early life adversities and health. All of her work uses large population datasets, including the British birth cohorts, the UK Millennium Cohort Study and panel datasets (e.g. the UK Household Longitudinal Study).
Stephen McCall
Regional Councilor,
Middle East & North Africa
Stephen McCall, D.Phil. is the acting director for the Center for Research on Population and Health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. The center leads and supports methodologically robust research to improve health and well-being at the intersection of population and health in Lebanon, and the Arab region. His research has focused on the social and structural determinants of health for vulnerable populations, including refugees, pregnant women, and older adults. Recently he has focused his research on the generation of longitudinal data through complex sampling designs to answer social epidemiological questions. Stephen gained his DPhil (PhD) in Population Health from the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU), Oxford Population Health, University of Oxford. Stephen also holds an MSc in Global Health Science from the University of Oxford and a BSc in Geography with First-class Honours from the University of Aberdeen.
Landon Myer
Regional Councilor, Africa
Landon Myer, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor and Head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at the University of Cape Town. With training in social anthropology, clinical medicine and epidemiology, his research focuses on women's, maternal and child health in the context of the HIV epidemic. He has lead multiple clinical, behavioural and health systems studies investigating the health of women and families in South Africa over the lifecourse, deepening understandings of the multilevel determinants of outcomes driving the burden of disease in southern Africa, including HIV and other infectious diseases (including tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections), mental health and obesity/metabolic disorders. At UCT he teaches epidemiologic methods as well as infectious and non-communicable diseases epidemiology.
Jabulani Ncayiyana
Regional Councilor, Africa
Jabulani Ncayiyana, Ph.D. is an epidemiologist and senior lecturer in the Discipline of Public Health Medicine, at the School of Nursing and Public Health at University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Durban, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He has specific training and expertise in infectious disease epidemiology and implementation science, as well as advanced training in biostatistics. He is an editorial member of the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE), BMC Infectious Diseases, and PLOS ONE. His research interests include Infectious disease epidemiology (especially TB and HIV), adolescent and child health, social determinants of health, cancer epidemiology, and implementation science.
Jean Kim
Regional Councilor, Asia
Jean Kim., M.Sc., Sc.D., is currently an Associate Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She completed her undergraduate degree at The University of California, Berkeley in a double major in molecular biology and anthropology which was then followed by her master's and doctoral studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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Using her background in biological science, social science and public health, she has been involved in a wide spectrum of research areas that include HIV risk behaviors, zoonotic infection research, nutritional intake, reproductive behaviors, alcohol use, women’s empowerment in relation to child health outcomes and various aspects of social well-being. As co-Director of the Master of Public Health program for 6 years, she worked to modernize public health teaching in Hong Kong to be aligned with international benchmarks. She is currently the co-Director of the Master of Science of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is currently teaching modules in epidemiology, research methods and global health policy to undergraduates and graduate students in Hong Kong. Recently funded research projects include examining population attitudes to medically assisted death in Hong Kong, social media effects on drinking in young adults and development of well-being instruments applicable to Chinese populations. Her PhD students studying under her include students from USA, Asia, and Africa.