View source for Rafael Perez-Escamilla

Rafael Pérez-Escamilla Costas is a Mexican-American public health nutritionist and Full Professor at Yale School of Public Health, where he directs the Office of Public Health Practice, Global Health Concentration, and Maternal Child Health Promotion program. He holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Universidad Iberoamericana and advanced degrees from the University of California, Davis.

Pérez-Escamilla began his career as an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut (UConn), where he founded the Connecticut Center for Eliminating Health Disparities among Latinos. In 2008, he was appointed to the national 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee by U.S. Secretaries Ed Schafer and Mike Leavitt. He later joined Yale as a professor in Chronic Disease Epidemiology and director of the Office of Community Health. During his tenure at UConn and Yale, he served as a scientific advisor to organizations such as the World Health Organization, UNICEF, FAO, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the USDA, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2016, Pérez-Escamilla addressed the Brazilian Senate on food insecurity, human development, and planetary health. His pioneering work in public health nutrition led to his election as a Member of the National Academy of Medicine. He was also inducted into the Connecticut Academy of Science for his expertise in maternal, infant, and young child feeding programs and food security research.