Till Bärnighausen
Professor Till Bärnighausen is a member of AHRI faculty, holds an Alexander von Humboldt professorship and is the director of the Institute of Public Health in the faculty of medicine, University of Heidelberg, Germany. He is also adjunct professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Till previously worked as physician in Germany, China, and South Africa; as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company; and as a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
His research focusses on establishing the causal impact of global health interventions – in particular for HIV, diabetes, hypertension, and vaccine-preventable diseases – on population health and social and economic outcomes. He works to both discover novel approaches to deliver healthcare through the public-sector health systems in sub-Saharan Africa and to advance the delivery of health interventions outside the existing routine systems. In 2016, Till received the Alexander von Humboldt professor award, the world’s most highly endowed international science prize, which is awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, including in Science, PNAS, Lancet and PLOS Medicine.
Work at AHRI
Till leads a research group focusing on health systems research and impact evaluation at AHRI. He is PI (jointly with Frank Tanser) on two large NIH R01 grants that seek to understand the long-term effects of the ART roll-out on HIV incidence and HIV-related mortality in a hyper-endemic rural South African population. He is further PI on a large European Union-funded health systems study to establish the causal impact of a quality improvement intervention in antenatal care on maternal and child health outcomes. His future work will involve studies on the causal impact of long-term HIV treatment on non-communicable diseases and the epidemiological transition and the effects of public health messages on knowledge, behaviour, and health.
Get in touch with Till via till.barnighausen@ahri.org
Click here for a full list of publications.
Selected Recent Publications
Mikkelsen E, Hontelez JA, Jansen MP, Bärnighausen T, Hauck K, Johansson KA, Meyer-Rath G, Over M, de Vlas SJ, van der Wilt GJ, Tromp N, Bijlmakers L, Baltussen RM (2017). Evidence for scaling up HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa: A call for incorporating health system constraints. PLOS Medicine; 14(2): e1002240.
Haber N, Tanser F, Bor J, Naidu K, Mutevedzi,T, Herbst K, Porter K, Pillay D, Bärnighausen T (2016). From HIV infection to therapeutic response: a population-based longitudinal HIV cascade of care in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Lancet HIV; 4(5): e223-e230.
Maheu-Giroux M, Tanser F, BoilyM, Pillay D, Joseph S, Bärnighausen T (2016). Determinants of time from HIV infection to linkage-to-care in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. AIDS; 31(7):1017-1024.
Bor J, Rosen S, Chimbindi N, Haber N, Herbst K, Mutevedzi T, Tanser F, Pillay D, Bärnighausen T. (2015). Mass HIV treatment and sex disparities in life expectancy: demographic surveillance in rural South Africa. PLOS Medicine; 12(11): e1001905. PMCID: PMC4658174.
Bor J, Herbst K, Newell M, Bärnighausen T. (2013). Increases in adult life expectancy in rural South Africa: valuing the scale-up of ART. Science; 339: 961-965. PMCID: PMC3860268.