Cristina Possas | |
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Cristina Possas, PhD
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Born |
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
June 5, 1948
Residence | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
Nationality | Brazilian |
Citizenship | Brazil |
Alma mater |
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Occupation | Minister of health, public health research scientist, infectious disease research scientist, academic |
Years active | 1985 — present |
Known for |
social epidemiology, Medical research, public health, infectious disease, Emerging infectious disease |
Home town | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
Title | Professor Fiocruz |
Cristina Possas de Albuquerque (Cristina Possas), PhD (5 June 1948 –), is a Brazilian public health scientist working with infectious diseases and emerging infectious diseases from an eco-social perspective. However, her approach to social ecosystem complexity is quite different from the four-fold eco-social approach of Harvard's Nancy Krieger in that she has proposed in a 2001 English-language article in the Brazilian Journal of Public Health Reports the concept of "social ecosystem health" where ecosystems are increasingly changed by social human activity, favoring the emergence of diseases, so the term "social" should precede the prefix "eco". Thus, she is known for (a) developing her new conceptual approach to social epidemiology, incorporating the economic concept of structural heterogeneity into an epidemiological model to identify the epidemiological profiles of heterogeneous populations in different social and economic strata and the conditions for emergence of diseases; (b) contributions of health policy and health reform in Brazil; and research on health transition, ecological change, complex systems, and emergence of new diseases.
She is a Takemi Fellow at Harvard University in Boston, where for 10 years she has been a Visiting Scientist and a Fulbright Fellow, and a professor at FIOCRUZ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
As a Brazilian Brazilian public health scientist working with infectious diseases from an eco-social perspective, Cristina Possas de Albuquerque (Cristina Possas) has as a policymaker long worked closely with public health and environmental scientists and with human rights and social justice civil organizations.
She also is a full professor at FIOCRUZ in Brazil, where in 1998 she had earned a PhD in public health, and where she now does research on infectious diseases and teaches a course named "Scientific Methodology" in the Masters and Doctoral Programs.