Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Adjunct Professor
Email: fbastos@sdsu.edu
Biography
Dr. Francisco I. Bastos is a Senior Researcher at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (FIOCRUZ) in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Adjunct Professor at San Diego State University, and former Chair of Graduate Studies in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at FIOCRUZ. He holds a MD with a specialty in Psychiatry from the State University of Rio de Janiero and completed training in Epidemiology, earning an MPH from the State University of Rio de Janeiro and a PhD from Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at a number of universities across the globe including the University of Hamburg (Germany), University of Laval (Canada), Imperial College London (UK) and Brown University (US).
His work has focused on the major harms associated with substance dependence, initially limited to opioids and related iatrogenic conditions, and later focusing on substances that are currently prevalent in Brazil, such as alcohol, cannabis, as especially powder and smoked coca/cocaine products. Relatedly, over the years he has been working with HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis. More recently, he fully realized that besides clinical and epidemiological aspects, programmatic and operational dimensions should be highlighted and made more pragmatic and humane. This insight broadened his horizons, with the incorporation of issues such as human rights promotion and protection, advocacy, policy-making, and monitoring & evaluation into his areas of interest.
He is both concerned with Brazilian issues as well as with the global dimensions of public health. After three decades in these fields, he has lived as a somewhat paradoxical combination of researcher and doctor serving impoverished and stigmatized populations, as well as a mentor of students, most of them from underserved communities. He is happy to be both a physician who is known among the homeless and the disenfranchised residents of the communities surrounding the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation main campus, as well as a global scholar with close links with friends from San Diego and several other cities and localities, worldwide.
For a list of his more than 200 publications, see his PubMed.
