Lopez, Alan

Position: Head of School

Phone: +61 7 336 55280

Fax: +61 7 336 55442

Email: a.lopez@sph.uq.edu.au

Location: 220

Building: Public Health Building

Centre or Group: Office of Head of School

Biography:

Professor Alan Lopez

Alan Lopez is  a Professor of Global Health, Head of the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland, and co-author of the WHO’s Global Burden of Disease Study.

Prior to joining the University in January 2003, he worked at the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, for 22 years where he held a series of technical and senior managerial posts including Chief epidemiologist in WHO’s Tobacco Control Program (1992-95), Manager of WHO’s Program on Substance Abuse (1996-98), Director of the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Unit (1999-2001) and Senior Science Advisor to the Director – General (2002).

He is a highly cited author whose publications have received worldwide acclaim for their rank in importance and influence in health and medical research, with over 13,500 lifetime citations and h index of 39 (June 2010), and over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, letters and book chapters on mortality analysis and causes of death, including the impact of the global tobacco epidemic, and on the global descriptive epidemiology of major diseases, injuries and risk factors. He is the co-author with Christopher Murray of the seminal Global Burden of Disease Study (1996) (2737 citations) which has greatly influenced debates about priority setting and resource allocation in health. His 2006 Lancet paper (lead author) with Murray and colleagues was listed among the 25 best publications in health and medical research worldwide in that year (Lancet, 2006, pg91). Three of his Lancet papers with Murray have each been cited more than 1000 times.

He is the co-author (with Sir Richard Peto) of the Peto-Lopez method which is widely used to estimate tobacco-attributable mortality to support policy action. He, Sir Richard and others recently published a second (online) edition of their seminal book on Mortality from Smoking in Developed Countries. He was awarded the Leverhulme Prize (with Sir Richard Peto) by the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1998 for his contributions to epidemiology and international health. Two of his Lancet papers with Sir Richard Peto (1992 and 2003) are listed among the top 10 most important and influential papers on the epidemiology of tobacco caused disease (Tobacco Control 2005;14:e1; doi:10.1136/tc.2005.013177).

Professor Lopez is on the editorial board of PLoS Medicine and Preventive Medicine, and co-Editor in Chief of Population Health Metrics. He is a member of the Wellcome Trust Population and Public Health Funding Committee (2007-2010), the WHO Expert Committee on NCD Surveillance (2009-2011), the US National Academy of Sciences Panel on Divergent Trends in Longevity (2008-2011), the Scientific Board of the Oxford Health Alliance Grand Challenges in Non-Communicable Disease (2006-2009), and was former Chair of the Health and Medical Research Council of Queensland (2006-2008). In 2009, he was elected as a Foreign Associate Member to the Institute of Medicine of the U.S National Academies of Sciences.

Qualifications:

  • Ph.D  (1978)
    The Australian National University, Canberra
  • M.S.  (1974)
    Purdue University, Lafayette, USA
  • Bachelor of Science (Hons),   (1973)
    University of Western Australia

Publications:

 

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