Authors

Mara Téllez-Rojo obtained a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico (2003) after a Masters in Statistics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (1994). She is a senior researcher (ICM-F) at the Center for Nutrition and Health Research at the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico with more than 250 papers published in high impact scientific journals and more than 6000 citations. Her main focus of research is the study of the long term effects of the co-exposure of environmental toxicants and nutritional conditions during gestation and infancy. Since 2002, she has been the principal investigator from the Mexico site of the ELEMENT (Early Live Exposure in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants project) birth cohort study that started in 1994. Along with Drs. Robert and Rosalind Wright and Andrea Baccarelli, has also been one of the principal investigators of the PROGRESS (Program Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment and Social Stressors) birth cohort study since its beginning in 2007. Both studies still ongoing in collaboration with Mount Sinai School of Medicine, University of Columbia, University of Michigan and University of Toronto. From 2004-2014, she headed the Statistical Division at INSP. During that time, she was also very active designing, conducting and analyzing several projects on program evaluation of social interventions. Among the most important projects she has participated in this area is the impact evaluation of Oportunidades, the main anti-poverty program in México; the impact evaluation of Seguro Popular, a health policy aimed to finance and provide health services to more than 50 million Mexicans and she leaded the impact evaluation of 70 y más, the federal anti-poverty program for the elderly population. She had a leading role in the conduction of several national surveys on health-related topics as well. Most of her recent work is focus on impacting health policy of lead exposure in Mexico.

“The report is an urgent call to all countries to expand efforts on different kind of pollution control. The report highlights inequities on toxic exposures as well as efforts to remediate it. We are in a very dangerous pathway, getting close to a dead end. All efforts to increase government efforts as well as social awareness on the long term effects of global pollution should be implemented. Especially, more attention is needed to address the long term public health consequences due to ambient air and toxic chemical pollution.”