IAAH Regional Vice President Spotlight - Latin America - March 2020
IAAH Regional Vice President for Latin America, María del Carmen Calle Dávila, is a public health consultant and a pediatrician at Clinica Javier Prado. Calle Dávila holds a masters in government and management health and a doctorate in public health, and has over 35 years of experience in local, national, and international public health and specializes in health promotion and positive development of adolescents in Latin America. She is also the Ex-Vice Minister of Public Health in Peru.
Calle Dávila currently serves as the President of the Peruvian Society of Adolescents and Youth, as the executive secretary for the Hipolito Unanue Andrean Health Organism, is an active collaborator for the health and wellness of children and adolescents in the Peruvian Society of Paediatrics, and serves on the Committee of Social Paediatrics in the Latin American Association of Paediatrics. In addition to these roles, she has also done extensive work with PAHO, the Ministry of Health of Peru (MINSA) and CODAJIC (Confederacíon de Adolescencia y Juventud de Iberoamérica y El Caribe/Confederation of Adolescence and Youth of Latin American, Italy, and the Caribbean). Calle Dávila has been invited to speak at many national and international congresses and is a co-author on the PAHO publication, “The Health of Adolescents and Youth in the Americas. Implementation of the Regional Strategy and Plan of Action on Adolescent and Youth Health 2010-2018.”
In her role as the Latin American Vice President for IAAH, Calle Dávila is co-chair of the scientific planning committee for the IAAH World Congress, being held in Lima, Peru, 5-7 November, 2020. She has been working tirelessly to develop a comprehensive scientific programme, has been recruiting guest speakers from around the world, and has been the main point of contact with the Peruvian organizing group. She co-chairs the IAAH Governance Committee and has helped to create a template for reviewing and approving policy and brief statements put out by IAAH.
Calle Dávila is marred to Augusto Saavedra Lopez, a nephrologist and past president of the Peruvian Society for Nephrology. She has three sons and two grandchildren.