NEW YORK, Jan. 18 (AScribe Newswire) -- Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin announced today that Dr. Ariel Pablos-Mendez is joining the Foundation as a new Managing Director.
Ariel Pablos-Mendez, 45, a physician and epidemiologist, is Director of Knowledge Management & Sharing at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva. He is also an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and Public Health at Columbia University. He will assume his new position at the Rockefeller Foundation in April, 2007.
Dr. Pablos-Mendez, who joined WHO in 2004, has been working there on establishing the principles and practice of knowledge management as a core competence of public health to help bridge the gap between research and implementation.
This marks Dr. Pablos-Mendez's return to the Rockefeller Foundation, where he was from 1998 to 2004. During his previous tenure, working with international agencies and donors, he spearheaded the creation of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, which aims to shorten and facilitate the treatment of the disease in poor countries. He also led a re-thinking of the Foundation's program in AIDS, which brought about an initiative for the treatment of mothers with AIDS and their families. Dr. Pablos-Mendez was serving as Acting Director for Health Equity when he left the Rockefeller Foundation in 2004.
In announcing Dr. Pablos-Mendez's appointment, Rockefeller Foundation president Judith Rodin said, "From establishing the first schools of public health in the United States to more recently incubating public-private partnerships to find an affordable and available AIDS vaccine, the Rockefeller Foundation has always supported pioneering work in global health. That's why it's especially gratifying to welcome Ariel back to the Foundation. Given his cutting-edge work in epidemiology, knowledge management, and private-public partnerships, he is the ideal person to help us continue the Foundation's longstanding commitment to global health."
Dr. Pablos-Mendez said, "With this era of growing pandemics and increasingly complex health systems, the challenges in public health have never seemed greater. So, it's an exciting time to be re-joining the Rockefeller Foundation with the opportunity to address some of these critical issues. I also look forward to continuing to interact with my colleagues at WHO, which is fortunate to have Dr. Margaret Chan as its dynamic new Director General."
Dr. Pablos-Mendez received his M.D. from the University of Guadalajara's School of Medicine (Mexico) and his M.P.H from Columbia University's School of Public Health. Until 2004, Dr. Pablos-Mendez served as an Assoc. Attending Physician in Medicine at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He is a member of several international health advisory committees and serves an editorial reviewer for the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and The Lancet.
The Rockefeller Foundation was established in 1913 by John D. Rockefeller, Sr., to "promote the well-being" of humanity by addressing the root causes of serious problems. With assets of more than $3 billion, it is one of the nation's largest private foundations. The Foundation works internationally to expand opportunities for poor and vulnerable people and to help ensure that the benefits of globalization are shared more widely.