Andrea Ramirez Varela, MD, PhD, MPH

Biography

I am a physician-scientist working at the intersection of public health, physical activity epidemiology, and health policy research. I have focused my career on three main areas: (1) Studies across the lifespan among underserved populations in Latin America and other low and middle-income country settings, to study the prevalence, determinants and correlates of physical activity and healthy lifestyle in children and adults, and morbidity and mortality in children, childhood obesity and malnutrition; (2) Studies to establish, strengthen and sustain global surveillance systems of physical activity levels, research capacity, and physical activity policy, to contribute to effective and equitable global physical activity promotion efforts; and, (3) Studies using a broad syndemic approach to understand the relation between physical activity promotion, non-communicable disease prevention, and infectious disease crises (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic) and with this, find synergistic solutions to all. I have been interested in working with multidisciplinary groups to use rigorous epidemiological methods and meta-research for documenting, understanding, and improving research, surveillance and policy capacity, and advocacy for physical inactivity, NCDs, obesity, and malnutrition prevention. Therefore, my research interests are epidemiology, public health surveillance, physical activity epidemiology, health policy research, preventive medicine, global public health capacity for disease prevention and, translation research especially in Latin America.