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 is an enrolled member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. She is currently the Executive Vice President at Seattle Indian Health Board and the Director of Urban Indian Health Institute.
Currently, Abigail is part of multiple committees, Boards, and workgroups including the Best Starts for Kids Board, the March of Dimes Health Equity Workgroup, the Tribal Collaboration Working Group with the NIH All of Us Research Program, the Advisory Committee for Health Equity Research at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the NIDA American Indian and Alaska Native Collaborative Research Engagement Workgroup, and the Board of Data for Indigenous Justice.
In the past, Abigail spent eight years as the Tribal Liaison with Partnerships for Native Health at the School of Public Health at The University of Washington. In 2016, she became the Co-director of Partnerships of Native Health at the Washington State University Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health. Abigail was also the Tribal Relationship Facilitator at the Institute of Translational Health Sciences at the University of Washington from 2010 to 2015. In 2015, she became a Board Member for the Center for Indigenous Law and Justice.
Abigail has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies and a Master of Arts degree in Policy Studies, both from the University of Washington. She is an expert in American Indian and Alaska Native health, including strengths and resiliencies as well as deficits and disparities.

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 National Director of Cancer Control and Chief Executive of Te Aho o Te Kahu, the Cancer Control Agency in New Zealand. Her role is to provide national leadership for, and oversight of cancer control, to provide policy advice to the Government, and to be accountable for ensuring progress towards the goals and outcomes in the New Zealand Cancer Action Plan.

Previously Diana was Head of the Department of Public Health and Director of the Cancer and Chronic Conditions (C3) research group at University of Otago, Wellington.  She has led a large body of research relating to disparities in cancer outcomes, and has close to 200 peer-reviewed publications. This work has resulted in the identification of key patient and health system factors that influence cancer survival. It has been used extensively by health policy makers, clinicians and other researchers to develop policies and practices that aim to reduce inequities in cancer outcomes

Diana has held a number of national and international roles. She is currently a commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Health Systems and Cancer, a current member of the International Advisory Committee to Lancet Oncology, the Board of the International Cancer Benchmarking Programme (ICBP), and the Advisory Committee to the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) Pacific cancer hub. She led a 2019 Lancet Oncology series on cancer in small island developing states and is a former member of IARC’s international expert group on social inequalities in cancer, the International Academic Advisory Committee on the International Cancer Benchmarking Project, the NZ National Cancer Programme Leadership Board, the National Screening Advisory Group, the National Ethics Advisory Committee, the Bowel Cancer Taskforce and the National Bowel Cancer Screening Advisory Committee.

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.