Date & Place

15-16 September 2022
Golden Tulip Zira Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia (View on Google Maps)
Online participation will not be possible

 Abstract book

On this page

• Invited speakers
• Program at a glance
• Detailed program
• Social event

Invited speakers

Dr Mirza Balaj, Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research, Norway

Dr Mirza Balaj is the Scientific Coordinator of the Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN). The mission of CHAIN is to create a global transformation in actionable health inequalities research. Dr. Balaj has been contributing to this mission over the last 7 years through data collection from all world regions, evidence-based research and dissemination to the larger public and to national and international policymaking institutions. Her research interest is to examine how health outcomes and behaviors are shaped by the interaction of socioeconomic position and social structural forces. Currently in her research she is exploring the association between education and mortality globally. The aim is to provide the first systematic global evidence on the impact education on all-cause and cause-specific mortality including COVID-19 mortality. Her research is published in leading journals such as The Lancet, Sociology of Health and Illness, Social Theory and Health and European Journal of Public Health.

Dr Kanitta Bundhamcharoen, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand

Dr Kanitta Bundhamcharoen, DDS, PhD, has served as a senior researcher and the head of the Burden of Disease Program at the IHPP. She has substantial experience working on mortality and morbidity data for the national burden of disease study since the first round in 2000. In addition, she has worked as a plan and policy analyst in the Ministry of Public Health. Her research interests include cause of death analysis, non-fatal burden estimation, health disparity, health outcome indicators, and ageing policy. Recently, she led the study on cause-of-death of Thai population and act as a focal point in collaboration with the Vital Strategies on the Thailand CRVS System Improvement Program. She currently undertakes a lead role in the study on indirect impact of COVID-19 on excess mortality. In addition, she is appointed member of the cause of death Task Force in the WHO Reference Group on Global Health Statistics (RGHS).

Dr Bochen Cao, World Health Organization

Dr Bochen Cao is a Technical Officer in the Department of Data and Analytics of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He is responsible for producing WHO’s regular estimates for all-cause mortality, causes of death and burden of diseases for WHO’s Member States. His work also involves analyzing health-related data and drafting WHO’s annual flagship reports for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including the World Health Statistics. He holds a PhD degree in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in the US, and has worked in the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, before joining WHO.

Dr Juanita Haagsma, Erasmus MC, the Netherlands

Dr Juanita Haagsma, PhD in health sciences, works as Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Health at the Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research focuses mainly on burden of disease estimates of injury and quantifying long-term consequences of injury in particular. For several years, she worked as Assistant Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, where she was a member of the injuries team of the Global Burden of Disease study. She was responsible for the development and implementation of methods to calculate the global burden of injury. In addition, she has conducted several studies on disability weights, including a large disability weight study that collected responses from more than 30,000 people from four European countries.

Prof Dr Shuhei Nomura, Keio University, Japan

Prof Dr Shuhei Nomura is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Keio University School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine. Dr Nomura is currently engaged in the Global Burden of Diseases Study, acting as the Japanese focal point. Dr Nomura is also actively involved in the national and local government's efforts to combat COVID-19 in Japan, analysing a combination of government survey statistics and private sector data to provide critical intelligence and evidence on the spread of infection for the planning of countermeasures. Dr Nomura’s specific areas of expertise include biostatistics, global health policy, official development assistance, comparative risk assessment, and disaster risk management.

Dr Sara Monteiro Pires, National Food Institute, Denmark

Dr Sara Pires is a senior scientist at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark. Her main areas of research are the burden and control of foodborne diseases. She has developed and applied methods to assess the burden of food-associated diseases at national and international level, and to provide evidence to guide public health policy for disease prevention. She is the chair of the Working Group on Infectious Diseases of the European Burden of Disease Network.

Dr Lea Sletting Jakobsen, National Food Institute, Denmark

Dr Lea Sletting Jakobsen is a senior scientist at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark. Dr Jakobsen holds a Master of Science in Food Safety and PhD in disease burden of foodborne chemicals. Her main areas is the burden of food-associated diseases including chemicals and toxins and dietary risk factors. She has contributed to WHO/FAOs guiding principles on sustainable healthy diets, and served as an expert in the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environments initiative to estimate the health impact of fish in the Norwegian diet. She is a project leader under the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration’s funding programme, providing scientific advice on the health impact of sustainable diet focusing on dietary chemical exposures. Dr Jakobsen is a member of the WHO Foodborne Disease Epidemiology Reference Group and serves as chair of the Chemicals and Toxins taskforce. Besides, she lectures on foodborne burden of disease indicators at the PhD level and supervises undergraduate and graduate students.

Dr Orsolya Varga, University of Debrecen, Hungary

Dr Orsolya Varga earned her medical (MD) degree in 2003 and a degree in law (ML) in 2007, and received her PhD in Health Sciences in 2008 at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology, Porto, Portugal and Danish Centre for Bioethics and Risk Assessment, Copenhagen, Denmark between 2008 and 2013. Her research interests focus on policy impact analysis, research prioritization and legal mapping of policies on non-communicable diseases. Orsolya Varga received the Premium postdoctoral researcher fellowship in 2019 and she currently holds a part-time position as a senior lecturer at the Department of Public Health and Epidemiology of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Debrecen. Orsolya serves as the national contact point for Hungary of the European Association of Health Law.

Program at a glance

The International Burden of Disease Conference will cover presentations from our keynote speakers and other burden of disease enthusiasts.

Detailed program

Thursday 15/09

Friday 16/09

Poster presentations

Social event

On Thursday 15/9, we will organise a group dinner in the "Zlatar" restaurant, offering traditional Serbian cuisine and culture. The social event will be offered to you by Sciensano, the Belgian institute for health.