Mauricio Avendano

Experience Keywords

cardiovascular; epidemiology; methods; social epidemiology

Research Summary

Mauricio Avendano is Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director at LSE Health. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the Harvard School of Public health.

He is an epidemiologist with an interest in the causal impact of social policies on health from a cross-national comparative perspective. He was closely involved in the design of the health module of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a comparative study of 18 countries examining the links between health and the social and economic dimensions of life, on which much of his research is based. His current research integrates econometric and epidemiological approaches to study the impact of social policy on health in Europe and the US.

In 2011, he was awarded a Starting Independent Researcher grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to examine how economic recessions during critical periods in the life-course from childhood to adulthood influence health and mortality later in life in European countries and the United States. Part of his research also studies the impact of family support policies on the health of mothers, and whether cross-national differences in family support policies explain life expectancy differences between the US and European countries.

More recent work also examines the impact of health insurance coverage and social protection programmes on health in Colombia and other Latin American countries.

Research Countries

Europe; Latin America; USA

Languages

Dutch [Spoken: Fluent, Written: Fluent]; French [Spoken: Fluent, Written: Intermediate]; Spanish [Spoken: Fluent, Written: Fluent]