Biography
Dr. Benn Sartorius, PhD, is currently a full research professor in the Department of Public Health Medicine, College of Health Sciences at University of KwaZulu-Natal. His main research focus has been in the spatial epidemiology domain with particular focus on burden of disease and associated determinants both at small-area resolution as well as at country and global scales. He joined the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) as a collaborator in 2014 and the Scientific Council for the GBD Project in 2015, as one of two members currently from the African continent. He is also a member of the WHO 13th General Programme of Work (GPW 13) Metrics Taskforce under the auspices of the WHO Expert Reference Group to accelerate the development of the triple billion methodology focusing on three strategic priority areas: universal health coverage, health emergencies and healthier population targets.
Outside of the GBD umbrella Dr. Sartorius also actively collaborate with researchers at The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) as well as very closely with leading local research institutions in South Africa such as Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) and recently the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform (KRISP).
Dr. Sartorius studied at University of the Witwatersrand and was a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at Wits University prior to moving across to Public Health Medicine at University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2013 where he is currently employed.
Bhattacharjee NV, Schaeffer LE, Marczak LB, Ross JM, Swartz SJ, Albright J, Gardner WM, Shields C, Sligar A, Schipp MF, Pickering BV, Henry NJ, Johnson KB, Louie C, Cork MA, Steuben KM, Lazzar-Atwood A, Lu D, Kinyoki DK, Osgood-Zimmerman A, Earl L, Mosser JF, Deshpande A, Burstein R, Woyczynski LP, Wilson KF, VanderHeide JD, Wiens KE, Reiner RC, Piwoz EG, Rawat R, Sartorius B, Weaver ND, Nixon MR, Smith DL, Kassebaum NJ, Gakidou E, Lim SS, Mokdad AH, Murray CJL, Dwyer-Lindgren L, Hay SI. Mapping exclusive breastfeeding in Africa between 2000 and 2017. Nature Medicine. 22 July 2019. doi:10.1038/s41591-019-0525-0.
GBD 2016 Lifetime Risk of Stroke Collaborators. Global, Regional, and Country-Specific Lifetime Risks of Stroke, 1990 and 2016. The New England Journal of Medicine. 19 Dec 2018. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1804492.