Dr Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas

Dr Peña-Rosas currently works as Head of Global Initiatives (cross-cutting) team, Office of the Director, Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, and has served senior-level positions at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva since he joined in July 2008. He also works partial time as a senior officer in the WHO Special Programme of Primary Health Care. 

He works for the advancement of public health epidemiology focused on policymaking to improve global maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition.

He led, co-led and contributed over 60 WHO evidence-informed global guidelines with state-of-the-art methods for their development and supported their implementation through people-centred integrated care in primary health care. He has authored over 100 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. 

He currently leads the WHO guideline for the improvement of functioning domains, activities and social participation of infants at risk of excess adiposity and children and adolescents with obesity, using a primary health care approach. 

In 2019, he led a multidisciplinary agile team on nutrition in primary health care settings for universal health coverage.

Dr Peña-Rosas is Professor (Adjunct) at Rollins School of Global Health, Emory University in Atlanta, USA since 2011 and Professor (Adjunct) in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA since October 2017. 

He helped establish the annual WHO/Cochrane/Cornell summer institute for systematic reviews in nutrition for global policy-making in collaboration with leaders in these organizations since 2014 and is a founder member of Cochrane Nutrition.

Prior to WHO, Juan Pablo worked as a Specialist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA and was involved in planning, implementing, and reporting of health and nutrition surveillance systems to inform policy. 

In the private sector, JP worked for Kellogg Company from 1997 to 2002, leading nutrition and food scientific and regulatory affairs at the regional level in the Latin America Headquarters based in Mexico and serving eight-country subsidiaries. 

JP is a Venezuelan medical epidemiologist, scientist and diplomat who received his Medical Degree from Universidad Central de Venezuela and a MSc in Public Health Nutrition from University of Puerto Rico. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Human Nutrition from Cornell University, USA.