World Non-Communicable Diseases Congress 2023

Professor, Division of Cardiology Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, McMaster University
Director, Chanchlani Research Centre
Director of the Vascular Medicine Fellowship Program Senior Scientist, Population Health Research Institute
Canada Research Chair, Ethnic Diversity and Cardiovascular Disease Heart and Stroke Chair in Population Health
Associate Chair of Equity and Diversity, Department of Medicine

Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Dr. Sonia Anand is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at McMaster University, is the Director of the Chanchlani Research Centre focused on Health Equity Research, and is a Senior Scientist at the Population Health Research Institute. Dr. Anand received a Doctor of Medicine from McMaster in 1992, Internal Medicine Training at McMaster and a Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1996. After additional clinical training in thrombosis and in vascular medicine at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Anand works as a vascular medicine specialist at Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University. Dr. Anand further received her Master’s in Clinical Epidemiology at McMaster in 1996 and Ph.D. in Health Research Methodology at McMaster in 2002. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethnic Diversity and Cardiovascular Disease and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario/Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Population Health Research. Her present research focuses upon the environmental and genetic determinants of vascular disease in populations of varying ancestral origin, women and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Anand has been awarded more than 46 million dollars in research funding in the last 10 years including two recent COVID-19 observational studies. Dr. Anand’s work is widely published amongst academic journals with over 415 scientific publications, and in 2019 she was inducted as a Fellow to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Secretary, Ministry of Science and Technology

New Delhi, India

Asian Scientist Magazine (Jul. 5, 2016) published an article on 8 Scientists From India To Watch Wherein they featured a handful of Indian scientists that are breaking new ground in space, biomedical science, pharmaceuticals and beyond. Dr. Chandrasekhar was one amongst them along with Bharat Ratna Prof. CNR Rao, Kiran Majumdar Shaw etc.

Professor, School of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH) Member of the US National Academy of Medicine Former Minister of Health of Peru

Lima, Peru

Dr. Patty J. García, is a Professor at the School of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH) in Lima-Peru and member of the US National Academy of Medicine. She is the former Minister of Health of Peru, former Dean of the School of Public Health at UPCH, and former Chief of the Peruvian National Institute of Health (INS). She is recognized as a leader in Global Health. She is affiliate Professor of the Department of Global Health, at University of Washington and of the School of Public Health at Tulane University. She is actively involved in research and training in Global health, Reproductive health, STI/HIV, HPV, diagnostics and medical informatics. Dr. Garcia has been a member of the advisory board of CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations). During the pandemic she has been leading clinical trials in Peru as SOLIDARITY, Convalescent plasma and ivermectin use, and has been chairing the advising governmental committee on innovations to fight the pandemic. Dr. Garcia is the Chair of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Disease Elimination (STAG-D), Panamerican Health Organization (PAHO), Member of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee on HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections (STAC-HHS)-WHO, Member of the Lancet Commission on Diagnostics: No treatment without accurate diagnosis and Member of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on In vitro Diagnostics (SAGE IVD).

Director, Fogarty International Center Associate Director for International Research at NIH

Maryland, USA

Dr. Glass was named Director of the Fogarty International Center and Associate Director for International Research by NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., on March 31, 2006.
Dr. Glass graduated from Harvard College in 1967, received a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Buenos Aires in 1967, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1972. He joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1977 as a medical officer assigned to the Environmental Hazards Branch. He was a Scientist at the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh (icddr,b) from 1979-1983 and returned to Sweden where he received his doctorate from the University of Goteborg. In 1984, he joined the National Institutes of Health Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, where he worked on the molecular biology of rotavirus. In 1986, Dr. Glass returned to the CDC to become Chief of the Viral Gastroenteritis Unit at the National Center for Infectious Diseases.
Dr. Glass’s research interests are in the prevention of gastroenteritis from rotaviruses and noroviruses through the application of novel scientific research. He has maintained field studies in India, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, Israel, Russia, Vietnam, China and elsewhere. His research has been targeted toward epidemiologic studies to anticipate the introduction of rotavirus vaccines. He is fluent and often lectures in five languages.
Dr. Glass has received numerous awards including the prestigious Charles C. Shepard Lifetime Scientific Achievement Award presented by the CDC in recognition of his 30-year career of scientific research application and leadership, the Dr. Charles Merieux Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases for his work on rotavirus vaccines in the developing world. Dr. Glass is also the recipient of the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal Award, Georgetown University’s Cura Personalis Award, Research!America’s Geoffrey Beene Builders of Science Award, Rice University’s Rice 360˚ Institute for Global Health Award, and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. Dr. Glass has co-authored more than 600 research papers and chapters.
He is married to Barbara Stoll, M.D., the H. Wayne Hightower Distinguished Professor in the Medical Sciences and former Dean of the University of the Texas Medical School at Houston, and the father of three children: Nina, Michael and Andy Glass.

Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology
Former President of the American Heart Association as well as the World Heart Federation.

New York, USA

Principal, Kealey & Associates (consulting agency) Former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister John Turner, Government of Canada

Ontario, Canada

Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation, Government of Botswana

Gaborone, Botswana

Author Professor Entrepreneur Former Chair of Canada-India Foundation

Ontario, Canada

Dr. V.I. Lakshmanan is an internationally renowned teacher, scientist and innovator in the area of sustainable development. He has more than 40 years of hands-on experience in technology development, commercialization, and skills development initiatives with both private and public sectors including the United Nations. He moved to Canada in 1974, after serving as Lecturer in University of Birmingham, UK. He subsequently held prominent positions in Canada’s engineering/technology sector, with companies such as Noranda, Eldorado Nuclear, ORTECH Corporation and Process Research ORTECH(PRO). He co-founded PRO in Mississauga in 1999 and has guided it to become a global leader in sustainable process technologies. His professional honours include Fellowship of Canadian Academy of Engineering, Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum and many others. He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the University of Toronto. He has published more than 150 papers and written several books on science, process engineering and public policy.
Dr Lakshmanan has channeled his passion for community service through countless initiatives, supporting organizations like Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce, Canada India Business Council, TiE Toronto, and IC-IMPACTS. Dr Lakshmanan is a co-founder and Past Chair of Canada India Foundation, a public policy organization, where he organized several sectoral Canada-India public policy forums and was instrumental in three visits to Canada by India’s former President, Dr. Abdul Kalam. With late Dr Kalam’s inspiration, he has been conducting conferences on Smart Villages at University of Toronto. He sponsored clean drinking water systems and a mobile hospital in rural India.
Dr Lakshmanan’s contributions to science and community service have earned him the Order of Canada award as an officer, and the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and many other honours. In June 2019, he also received the Lifetime / Outstanding Achievement Award from Indo Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Former Lead Public Health Specialist, World Bank Group (WBG) Senior Associate, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Maryland, USA

Patricio V. Marquez is a former World Bank Group (WBG) Lead Public Health Specialist. He retired in August 2019 after 32 years of service working in over 80 countries across the world. In March 2020, he returned to the WBG as Consultant to support the preparation and implementation of the US$6 billion COVID-19 Global Emergency Response Program in the health sector and the US$20 billion Additional Financing for Vaccines and Vaccination across the world, as well as for co-authoring the “Better Together: A Mental Health and Well-Being Strategy for the World Bank Group”, which was launched on May 4th, 2022.
He is a Senior Associate at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, serves as a Pledge Champion at the Tobacco Free Portfolios Foundation, and in 2021, he was elected to serve as a governing member of the Charles Darwin Foundation for the Conservation of the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. In July 2022, he was invited to serve as a member of the External Advisory Board for the University of Washington Consortium for Global Mental Health and the and the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH).
He is originally from Cuenca, Ecuador.

Vice President, RTI International

North Carolina, USA

Rachel Nugent, PhD, has more than 30 years of experience in global development as a researcher, practitioner, and policy advisor to governments. She is Vice President and Director of the Center for Global NCDs at RTI International where she leads a team charged with providing policy analysis, implementation, and evaluation of cost-effective strategies to prevent and control global noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). RTI’s global NCD experts generate and translate new evidence to help guide global and national decision-making aimed at noncommunicable disease detection, prevention, and control. Dr. Nugent manages the Center’s capabilities including health economics and evaluation; communication and behavior change; epidemiology and survey research; establishment of disease and risk factor registries; and development of guidelines, care pathways, and medical technology applications for global NCDs.

Dr. Nugent led the Lancet Task Force on NCDs and Economics and is a member of the Lancet Commission on Women and Cancer, the Food System Economics Commission, co-chairs the Steering Group of the Coalition for Access to NCD Medicines and Supplies and serves in numerous advisory positions. She formerly served as a member of the U.S. Institute of Medicine Committee on Economic Evaluation, the International Expert Group for the Global Nutrition Report, the External Advisory Committee of the NCD Alliance and Children’s Heartlink. Dr. Nugent’s interests include the economic benefits of controlling antimicrobial resistance. She was the lead author and chair of The Race Against Drug Resistance, a 2010 report from the Center for Global Development’s expert working group on global drug resistance. Previously, Dr. Nugent was an associate professor of global health at the University of Washington and director and principal investigator of the Disease Control Priorities Network. She is affiliate associate professor at the University of Washington Department of Global Health. She previously worked at the Center for Global Development, the Population Reference Bureau, the Fogarty International Center of NIH, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI)

New Delhi, India

Prof.K. Srinath Reddy is the President, Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. Under his leadership, PHFI has established five Indian Institutes of Public Health (IIPHs) to advance multi-disciplinary public health education, research, health technologies and implementation support for strengthening health systems. He was appointed as the First Bernard Lown Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Health at the Harvard School of Public Health in (2009-13) and presently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard (2014-2023). He holds advisory positions in several national and international bodies. He has over 570 scientific publications and published a book ‘Make Health in India: Reaching A Billion Plus’. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Emory, Sydney Universities and Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the first Indian to be elected to the National Academy of Medicine, USA and was awarded several prestigious international and national doctorates and fellowships. He was President of the World Heart Federation (2013-15). He is a Padma Bhushan awardee. He is also an Advisor to the Governments of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh on Health.

Founder and Director General of the Institute of Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) Former Minister of Health, Government of Argentina

Buenos Aires, Argentina

I am a physician graduated at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). I received a MSc in Clinical Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health in 1996 and a PhD in Public Health from UBA in 2000. In 2002, I completed a postgraduate diploma in Health Economics at the University of York, UK. I am now full Professor of Family Medicine, Full Professor of Public Health and founder and former Director of the Master’s program in Clinical Effectiveness of UBA. I am also Visiting scholar of the Lown Cardiovascular program at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

I was founder and chairman of the Division of Family and Community Medicine at the Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires, one of the leading teaching hospital in Argentina, until 2010. I was the founder and Director-General of the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) since its creation in 2002 until March 2017 when I was appointed as secretary of Health Promotion, Prevention and control of the National Ministry of Health and then National Minister of Health. From 2009 to 2017, I was Director and PI of the Southern Cone American Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Health, (CESCAS/IECS), sponsored by NHLBI and PI of several projects funded by NIH. My research was focused on health policy research, cardiovascular epidemiology and implementation research to improve prevention and control of NCD in Argentina and Latin America. In 2018-2019, I was appointed as a Commissioner of the WHO Independent High-level Commission on NCDs. I have been PI and Director of studies awarded by national (Argentine MoH and research bodies), regional and international bodies such as US NIH (NHLBI, NCI and FIC), IDRC, PAHO, WHO, WB, IDB, Merck and Pfizer foundation, and others. I was also board member of city Cancer Challenge (C/CAN) from 2018 to 2022.

I have published more than 120 papers in peer review journals as well as textbooks and book chapters in health policy and health reform, clinical epidemiology, health services research and economic evaluations, focusing on NCD epidemiology, different aspects of the practice of primary care, and resource-allocation decision making. I am an investigator of the National Council of Scientific Research of Argentina (CONICET).

During my term as a Minister of Health of Argentina, from 2017 through 2019, my priorities were focused on the expansion of Universal Health Strategy, particularly for uninsured population, prevention and control of NCD and childhood obesity, and regulation of price and coverage of innovative drugs. In 2020, I returned to my home institution, IECS, to create the Center for Implementation and Innovation in Health Policies (CIIPS), where I am its current Director. CIIPS is working on implementation of different programs and policies for organizations and governments in Argentina and Latin America. https://www.iecs.org.ar/en/ciips/

Senior Economist, World Bank Group

Washington DC, USA

Huihui Wang, M.D., Ph.D., is a Senior Economist at the World Bank Group. She has more than 20 years of experiences working with developing countries on health system reforms. Currently in the global engagement unit of Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice, she is leading global initiatives related to transforming and improving primary health care, knowledge programs on public health functions for disease control and drug safety monitoring. She has a medical degree from Beijing Medical University (now known as Beijing University Health Science Center), a Master of Art in economics and a Doctor of Philosophy in health services and policy analysis from University of California, Berkeley.

Distinguished University Professor of Medicine, McMaster University Executive Director, Population Health Research Institute Research Chair, Heart and Stroke Foundation

Hamilton, Ontario

Salim Yusuf, D.Phil, FRCPC, FRSC, O.C., is a Distinguished University Professor of Medicine at McMaster University, and Executive Director of the Population Health Research Institute. He holds a Heart and Stroke Foundation Research Chair, was a Senior Scientist of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (1999-2004). His work has advanced the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases around the world and has pioneered and demonstrated the value of dual antithrombotic therapies, ACE-inhibitors and the polypill to reduce CVD substantially around the world. He has received the Lifetime Research Achievement award of the World Heart Federation, the Paul Wood Silver Medal of the British Cardiac Society, the European Society of Cardiology gold medal, the American Heart Association Clinical Research Award, the Canada Gairdner-Wightman Prize, the McLaughlin medal of the Royal Society of Canada, the Killam Prize of the Canada Council of Arts and over 80 other international and national awards for research. He has also been inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, and appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has been conferred 4 honorary doctorates. He has led over 50 major international studies in over 100 countries and several of these have changed medical practice. He has published over 1200 articles in refereed journals, was the second most cited researcher in the world for 2011, the highest cited researcher in cardiology over several years and has the 17th highest H factor in history. He is a Past President of the World Heart Federation, where he initiated the Emerging Leaders program (now named after him) to build capacity for implementation and policy research in all continents of the world, with the aim of halving the CVD burden globally within a generation.

Director and Associate Dean of the School of Population and Global Health, McGill University, Montreal
Former Director of Health and Nutrition, World Bank

Dr. Timothy Grant Evans joined McGill University in September 2019, as the Inaugural Director and Associate Dean of the School of Population and Global Health (SPGH) in the Faculty of Medicine and Associate Vice-Principal (Global Policy and Innovation). Since joining McGill, and in the context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, he was named as the Executive Director of Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force in April 2020.
Prior to McGill, he spent 6 years as the Senior Director of the Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice at the World Bank Group. From 2010 to 2013, Tim was Dean of the James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Senior Advisor to the BRAC Health Program. From 2003 to 2010, he was Assistant Director General at the World Health Organization (WHO). Prior to this, he served as Director of the Health Equity Theme at the Rockefeller Foundation. Earlier in his career, he was an attending physician of internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and was Assistant Professor in International Health Economics at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Tim has been at the forefront of advancing global health equity and strengthening health systems delivery for more than 20 years. At WHO, he led the Commission on Social Determinants of Health and oversaw the production of the annual World Health Report. He has been a co-founder of many partnerships including the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) as well as efforts to increase access to HIV treatment for mothers and innovative approaches to training community-based midwives in Bangladesh. Tim received his Medical Degree from McMaster University in Canada and was a Research and Internal Medicine Resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He earned a D.Phil. in Agricultural Economics from University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research
Director, Institute for Aging Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine,

Dr. Barzilai is a chaired Professor of Medicine and Genetics and Director of the biggest Center in the world to study the Biology of Aging and the principal investigator of the Einstein Nathan Shock Center and the Glenn center. He was the recipient of an NIH Merit Award aiming to extend the healthy life span in rodents by biological interventions. He also studies families of centenarians that have provided genetic/biological insights on the protection against aging. Several drugs are developed based, in part, on these paradigm-changing studies. He now leads EXCEL Study (EXCptional Longevity) to recruit 10,000 centenarians and their families to validate and discover new longevity genes. He is leading the TAME (Targeting/Taming Aging with Metformin) multi central study to prove that concept that multi morbidities of aging can be delayed in humans and change the FDA indications to allow for next generation interventions.

He is the author of over 290 peer-reviewed papers and a recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the recipient of the 2010 Irving S. Wright Award of Distinction in Aging Research and is the 2018 recipient of the IPSEN Longevity award. He is on the board of AFAR, its scientific director and a founding member of the Academy for Lifespan and Health Span, The Longevity Biotech Association and Longevity Medicine Society. He co-founded CohBar and Lifebioscinces. He has been featured in major papers, podcasts TV program and documentaries (2 TEDx and TEDMED) and has been consulting or presented the promise for targeting aging at The Singapore Prime Minister Office, Prime Minister office in Israel, several International Banks, The Vatican, Pepsico, Milken Institute, Davos Economical Forum, and featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist and Wired Magazine. His book Age Later was published in the June of 2020

Brian Oldenburg is the Professor of Public Health and Implementation Science at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and LaTrobe University. He is also Director of the NHMRC-funded CRE in Interactive Digital Technology to Transform Australia’s Chronic Disease Outcomes. He is a behavioral scientist and global expert in the prevention and control of diabetes and other chronic conditions. He has pioneered many technology platforms and digital health solutions to improve chronic disease outcomes in Australia and other countries, in particular, for diabetes and heart disease. He is also a global expert in implementation research training and capacity building programs in Australia and globally, including developing countries.