Professor Francesco Checchi
OBE MHS PhD
Professor
of Epidemiology and International Health
LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom
I am an epidemiologist whose main expertise is quantitative public health measurement and disease control in crisis (armed conflict, natural disaster, epidemic) settings. I have worked for Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Health Organization and as a consultant for a variety of other agencies. I have spent several years at the School (2004-2012, 2017-present), and in between led Save the Children UK's humanitarian health team.
I have mixed experience in research, policy formulation and operational programme delivery in difficult and insecure settings. By mixed I mean diverse...although come to think of it some of it is definitely mixed.
I haven't managed to settle on a specific topic, though I have done work on malaria, human African trypanosomiasis, tuberculosis, cholera, Ebola, acute malnutrition, vaccines, and COVID-19. I've also worked a fair bit on methods for surveillance, surveys and field epidemiology in general.
My views on and tentative proposals for the future of humanitarian health are in this inaugural lecture which they made me do. It's from 2017, but I'm not really sure anything has changed in the humanitarian system since then...if anyone knows of something that's actually improved, please write with URGENT in the subject matter.
Languages: Italian, English, French. I can read German, Spanish and Portuguese, but don't ask me to write anything back.
R scripts and data: https://github.com/francescochecchi
Publications: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=checchi+f&sort=date
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
MSc module Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases (co-organiser)
MSc module Conflict & Health
MSc module Applying Public Health Principles in Developing Countries
MSc in Humanitarian Health (co-director, under development)
Unfortunately I'm unable at present to take on any more research degree students.
Research
Most of my work (the 8% left over after grant management and emails) is focussed on populations affected by crises due to armed conflict, food insecurity and natural disasters. Within this general setting, I currently work mainly on the following topics:
- mortality estimation in crisis settings;
- adapting vaccination strategies for displaced people and other crisis settings (especially but not only the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine).
Through PhD students and collaborators, I also support work on cholera outbreak control, epidemic risk perceptions, epidemic response evaluation and the effects of armed conflict on health services.
I'm on the Equity Reference Group for Immunization and the Partnership Team of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
I'm trying to decolonise my practice, particularly when it comes to partnering with colleagues in low-income countries (see our recently established Afya Consortium).
