Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas

Juan Pablo Peña-Rosas is a professor fellow at the Joan Klein Jacobs Center for Precision Nutrition and Health at Cornell Human Ecology. He previously worked as Head, Global Health Initiatives (cross-cutting) team, Office of the Director, Department of Nutrition and Food Safety, Division of Healthier Populations (HEP) and served senior-level positions at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva since he joined in July 2008. He also worked as an active member of the WHO Guidelines Review Committee in the periods 2009-2011 and 2021-2023. He was appointed as a member of the WHO Quality Support Panel for norms and standards tested during the year 2024. He is a member of Cochrane since 2003, a member of the WHO embracing disability affinity group and a WHO HEP Division representative of the WHO Gender, Equity and Human Rights Network.

He works for the advancement of public health epidemiology focused on policy making to ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages. 

He has led, co-led and contributed over 70 WHO practice and science-informed global policy with state-of-the-art methodology for guideline development and supports their implementation through people-centered integrated care in primary health care.  He has authored or co-authored over 100 publications in international peer-reviewed journals.

He served as a member of the WHO Guideline Steering Committee for the WHO guideline for the improvement of functioning domains, activities and social participation of girls and boys (in all their diversity) and adolescents with obesity, using a primary health care approach.

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. In 2019, he led a multidisciplinary agile team on nutrition in primary health care settings for universal health coverage. In 2021, its collaborative project between Cornell University, Creative Commons, Wikipedia and WHO received an award from the WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhamon Ghebreyesus for the Editathon 2021 Health for All” as part of the WHO LEAD Innovation Challenge 2021. 

JP also worked as a Specialist at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA from 2004-2008 and was involved in planning, implementing, and reporting of health and nutrition surveillance systems to inform policy internationally.

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

JP is a Venezuelan medical epidemiologist, scientist and diplomat who received his Medical Degree from Luis Razetti School of Medicine, Universidad Central de Venezuela and a MSc in Public Health Nutrition from University of Puerto Rico. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology,  Human Nutrition and International Nutrition from Cornell University, USA. He is married to Heber Gomez Malave (he, him, his), a musician/songwriter (aka “Belle Petite”), medical doctor, sociologist, writer and philanthropist.