Journal of Health, Population and Nutrition

Abdullah H. Baqui is a Professor of International Health and Director of the International Center for Maternal and Newborn Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is trained in medicine, public health, heath systems, infectious diseases, and epidemiology. He has extensive experience in public health research, training, education, and policy advocacy.

In 2000 he joined the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to joining the school, he served as Director of Child Health Program of icddr,b in Bangladesh. Working with the Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Bangladeshi NGOs, Dr Baqui established the Projahnmo Study Group in Bangladesh. He conducted pioneering research related to newborn and child health, infectious diseases, micronutrients, and other nutritional problems that influenced national and global policies and programs.

He has more than 30 years of experience in designing community- and facility-based interventions, conducting clinical and community trials, large scale program evaluations and setting up surveillance and surveys. His current research interests include design and evaluation of health interventions to improve health and survival of mothers and children, particularly newborn babies and evaluation of preventive and curative health service programs in low- and middle-income countries of South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa.

Simon Cousens is Professor of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he has been based since 1985. He is a mathematician/statistician by training.

The main focus of his research over the past 20 years has been on child health in low income settings, with a strong focus on neonatal health in recent years. In addition to involvement in field research projects in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia he has also been involved in work to improve global estimates of cause-specific neonatal mortality as a member of the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG).

While most of his work has related to low income settings, Simon has also been involved in research into Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the UK, working closely with the National CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh for many years.