Keynote Speakers

Henrique was born in Porto, Portugal. In 1991 became Gastroenterology specialist and defended his PhD, with research on the epidemiology of viral hepatitis.

Full Professor of Epidemiology at Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto;
President of the Institute of Public Health, University of Porto;
President of the National Health Council;
President of the IEA;

Responsible for designing and implementing three on-going Portuguese population-based cohorts which follow adults (EPiPorto), adolescents (EPITeen) and new-borns (G21); these research structures made possible to train a large number of Master and PhD candidates and resulted in multiple publications covering such topics as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, violence and social aspects of ageing besides a continued attention to methodological challenges and a special interest in perinatal epidemiology.

Having studied mathematics at Cambridge University, Rhian completed an MSc in Medical Statistics and a PhD in missing data methods at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has since focused on methods for learning about cause-effect relationships from observational data, first as a post-doc and lecturer at LSHTM, and since 2017 as Reader in Medical Statistics at Cardiff University.

She is interested in situations, such as when disentangling path-specific causal effects, where standard regression is valid only under very restrictive assumptions, and thus modern concepts and methods from the causal inference school are especially useful.

Her current work on high-dimensional mediation is funded by a Sir Henry Dale fellowship from the Welcome Trust and the Royal Society.

Abigail Echo-Hawk, MA (Pawnee), she was born in the heart of Alaska where she was raised in the traditional values of giving, respect for all and love. Ms. Echo-Hawk currently serves as the Director of the Urban Indian Health Institute, and the Chief Research Officer at the Seattle Indian Health Board. Urban Indian Health Institute is a Tribal Epidemiology Center that serves tribal people currently living off tribal lands nationwide. In addition, in UIHI’s role as the National Coordinating Center for Good Health and Wellness in Indian Country, she also works with approximately 100 tribal nations. Her work incorporates these core principles and activities: engagement and participation of community partners; research and evaluation on health, healthcare, and other community priorities; education, training, and capacity-building for Native people, including researchers, students, and communities; infrastructure development; technical assistance; and sharing results in a way that recognizes and respects the unique cultural contexts of American Indian and Alaska Native people. In these roles she also works with American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and organizations to identify health research priorities and with health researchers to ensure research is done in a manner that respects tribal sovereignty and is culturally appropriate.

Deborah Lawlor was Born in Bradford, in the North of England, and studied Medicine at Bristol University before working as a doctor in Bradford and Mozambique. She moved back to Bristol in 2000 to study for a PhD. She is now a Professor of Epidemiology in the Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol. Her research is concerned with developing and applying novel causal methods so that we can better understand the causes of adverse reproductive, perinatal and cardio-metabolic health, and the links between those conditions.

I am professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol, UK. I lead a research programme investigating cancer aetiology, early-detection and prognosis. My work exploits the application of causal analysis methods in cancer epidemiology. I established CRUK’s Integrative Cancer Epidemiology Programme (ICEP) at Bristol University. ICEP combines cutting-edge genomic technologies, novel systematic review methods and large-scale bioinformatic platforms to robustly identify novel cancer risk-factors, molecular mechanisms and predictive biomarkers.

Prof. K. Srinath Reddy is President, Public Health Foundation of India and is a cardiologist and epidemiologist. He has served as Visiting/Adjunct Professor at Harvard and Emory Universities. He has served on many WHO expert panels & was the President of the World Heart Federation. He chaired the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for the Planning Commission of India and co-chairs the Thematic Group on Health for the Sustainable Solutions Development Network. He has published more than 500 scientific papers. His several honours include WHO Director General’s Award and Luther Terry Medal of American Cancer Society for outstanding contributions to global tobacco control and the Queen Elizabeth Medal for health promotion. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Lausanne, NTR Health Services, ILBS University.

Professor Diana Sarfati (MBChB, MPH, PhD, FNZCPHM) is a public health physician, cancer epidemiologist and health services researcher. She is currently the Interim National Director of Cancer Control. She is also Director of the Cancer and Chronic Conditions (C3) Research Group at University of Otago, Wellington. Prof Sarfati is currently a member of the New Zealand National Cancer Leadership Board (NZ), as well as a member of the Advisory Committee to International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) Pacific cancer hub, the Academic Advisory Committee to IARC on the International Cancer Benchmarking Project, and has recently led the Lancet Oncology series on cancer control in small island developing states, published in August 2019.

Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Director of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance and applied economics, and biostatistics. His research concerns methodology for distinguishing between association and causation in observational studies, and the use of statistical and counterfactual ideas to formalize and advance epidemiologic theory and methods. His empirical research spans psychiatric, perinatal, and social epidemiology; the science of happiness and flourishing; and the study of religion and health. He is the recipient of the 2017 COPSS Presidents’ Award, has published over three hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals, and is author of the book Explanation in Causal Inference, published by Oxford University Press.