Leticia Artiles Visbal, PhD, MS
Anthropologist, with a doctorate in health sciences. Dr Artiles is a full professor at the Higher Institute in Medical Sciences of Havana, where she teaches research methodology. She is recognized internationally for her work in gender and sexual health, and her current research focuses on middle-aged women and social determinants of health. Dr Artiles serves as co-coordinator of the Latin American Social Medicine Association (ALAMES).
Guillermo Mesa Ridel, MD, MPhil
Specialist in epidemiology, full professor at the National School of Public Health. Dr Mesa is the director of the Latin American Center for Disaster Medicine (CLAMED); directs the Health, Emergencies and Disasters section of the Cuban Health Engineering Association; and heads the national post-graduate curriculum design cluster on health and disaster medicine. Dr Mesa is a founder of the National Health Surveillance System and of its Health Trends Analysis Unit (UATS). He was a member of the PAHO-CDC-Ministry of Public Health research team that studied the neuropathy epidemic in Cuba in the 1990s.
Albadio Pérez Assef, MD, MS
Specialist in internal medicine, and critical care and emergency medicine. Dr Pérez is an associate professor of internal medicine at the Higher Institute of Medical Sciences of Havana. He chairs the academic committee for the Master of Science program in emergency medicine at the Enrique Cabrera Medical School, Havana, and heads the National Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine Group. His current research focuses on critical maternal morbidity in intensive care.
Silvia J. Venero Fernández, MD
Specialist in hygiene and epidemiology, and in family medicine. Dr Venero worked as an epidemiologist on the municipal and provincial levels before taking her current position as director of the Epidemiology and Public Health Division at the National Institute of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology (INHEM). She is the national adviser and coordinator of the first year of Cuba’s hygiene and epidemiology residency program, and is working on a Master of Science in environmental health, researching asthma prevalence, severity, and associated risk factors in Cuba.
Cover art by Keyler Naranjo Rodríguez
Naranjo is a 13 year-old student at the Julio Antonio Mella Secondary School in the eastern Cuban city of Baracoa. In 2007, his painting, reproduced here by MEDICC Review, won second place in the 10- to 12-year-old category in the international Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School contest, sponsored by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
MEDICC Review, Summer 2008, Vol 10, No 3
