Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Erasmus University, Rotterdam (the Netherlands)	PhD	12/2006	Social Epidemiology & Public Health
Erasmus University, Rotterdam (the Netherlands)	Msc	06/2003	Epidemiology
Erasmus University, Rotterdam (the Netherlands)	MPH	06/2002	Public Health
University of Los Andes, Bogota (Colombia)	BSc	12/1999	Psychology

Mauricio Avendano is Associate Professor at the University of Lausanne. He is based at the Department of Epidemiology and Health Systems, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisante), where co-leads the Health Policy Unit. He is also adjunct Associate Professor at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, faculty at the Harvard Centre of Population and Development Studies, and visiting Professor in Public Policy & Global Health at King’s College London. Prior to joining the University of Lausanne, he held academic appointments at King’s College London (2015-2021), the London School of Economics (2011-2015), Harvard University (2008-2010) and the Erasmus Rotterdam University (2002-2011).

His research examines how public policies, social transformations and health systems contribute to health inequalities between and within countries. His work is interdisciplinary and at the crossroads between epidemiology and public health, economics, demography, sociology and public policy. He uses natural experiments and randomised controlled trials to establish the causal impact of public policies.

He has published more than 120 papers in leading international journals, and he has been awarded grants by the European Commission Horizon2020 programme, the UK Wellcome Trust, the European Research Council (ERC), the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK National Institute for Health Research, the Netherlands Research Council, the US National Institute of Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. He is also network associate of the McArthur Foundation Research Network on an Ageing Society. He has received several academic excellence awards, including an ERC Starting grant (2011-2016), a Harvard David Bell Fellowship (2008-2010), a Dutch Excellence starting research ‘VENI’ grant (2006-2010), and a Dutch Excellence advanced research ‘VIDI’ grant (2010-2014). He has collaborated with academics in more than 20 countries from across the health and social sciences.

• Social epidemiology
• Public Policy
• Ageing
• Natural experiments
• Quasi-experimental methods