Prof. Rainer Sauerborn

Université Paris Cité
rainer.sauerborn@uni-heidelberg.de

Bio:
Rainer Sauerborn MD, Dr. med. (Heidelberg) M.Sc. in Maternal & Child Health (London University), MPH & Dr. P.H. (both at Harvard University)
After two years of training in general medicine in Germany and Scotland, RS headed the Nouna health district in Burkina Faso from 1979 to 1982. Subsequently he trained as a paediatrician at Heidelberg University and the University of London. He decided to become a public health researcher and studied the field at the Harvard School of Public Health. After a 6-year stint as Coordinator of the Health Office at the Harvard Institute for International Development (1990-6), he became the director of the Institute of Global Health, formerly Inst. of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health. Until 2004, his research focus was on improving the quality of and access to health care in low-income countries.
For the past 15 years, he has worked on the nexus of climate change and health particularly focusing on populations in the global South. Translating science to policy, he served on the Scientific Advisory Board on Global Environmental Changes for the German Federal Government (2000-2004) and was a lead author of the health chapter of the 5th IPCC report (2009-2014). He (co)developed 6 MOOCs for different audiences on the topic. Recently, he worked with colleagues on climate and violence as drivers of out-migration.
Since his successor, Humboldt professor Till Bärnighausen took over the leadership of the institute in 2017, he led a new large North-South research consortium on “Climate Change and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa” funded by the German DFG and the Swiss National Fund.