P. Rafael Lozano Ascencio, MD, MSc

Director, Center for Health Systems Research; Senior Researcher "Level F"

National Institute of Public Health, Mexico

Director of Latin American and Caribbean Initiatives

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Principal Investigator, PH-LEADER Academy for NCDs

National Institute of Public Health, Mexico

Biography

Rafael Lozano, MSc, MD, is Director of the Center for Health Systems Research and Senior Researcher "Level F" at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health (INSP), where also serves as director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Initiatives and Professor of Global Health for the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Dr. Lozano spent seven years at the Ministry of Health in Mexico as the General Director of Health Information, where he coordinated the Health Information System for the Ministry of Health, the production of national health statistics, and coordinated information from a number of health sector institutions in Mexico. In this role, Dr. Lozano played a critical role in the construction of Mexico’s health reform through a systematic approach to evidence building.


A leading contributor to epidemiological statistics, theory, and methods, Dr. Lozano has worked at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva as Senior Epidemiologist for the Global Program on Evidence for Health Policy for three years, and at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health, where he headed the Department of Epidemiology and the Division of Epidemiological Transition. He spent several years at the Mexican Health Foundation, coordinating the Health Needs Assessment unit for the Center for Health and the Economy, and completed a two-year Research Fellowship at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.


After more than two decades of teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses in Mexico and the United States, Dr. Lozano has been instrumental in educating and mentoring a new generation of epidemiological and health system assessment experts. He has contributed his wealth of experience to numerous expert and advisory groups, including the Core Group of the Global Burden of Disease 2010 Study, the Technical Advisory Group for the WHO’s Health Metrics Network, and the Pan American Health Organization’s Health Statistics Advisory Committee. He has advised numerous countries on health sector strengthening and burden of disease studies, including Chile, Uruguay, Spain, and Colombia. Dr. Lozano has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on his research.

Publications