Professor Karl Blanchet

Professor Karl Blanchet is Professor of Humanitarian Public Health at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, and Director of the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies.

Professor Blanchet’s research focuses on public health, migration, health-system resilience, and health systems in global health, specifically in post-conflict and conflict-affected countries. He has developed innovative research approaches based on complexity science and systems thinking, with a particular focus on women’s, adolescents’, and children’s health in humanitarian settings.

He has also contributed to developing a priority package of essential health services for countries such as Afghanistan and, more generally, for humanitarian crises.

Karl is also Co-Chair of the CHH-Lancet Commission on Health, Conflict and Forced Displacement and Co-Chair of the Lancet Migration Europe regional hub. He is also the Academic Director of InZone, a University of Geneva academic project offering university courses for refugee populations.

Karl was the guest editor of the Lancet European Regional Health special issue on Migration, Health and Equity, published in May 2024. Karl Blanchet was one of the co-PIs of the Lancet Series on Women’s and Children’s Health in Conflict Settings. Karl is also a co-principal investigator (CO-PI) of the PULSE study, focusing on community engagement during vaccination programs in Nigeria and Ethiopia, and PI of the Senselet study in Ethiopia, which focuses on diabetes and hypertension.

Before joining the University of Geneva, Professor Blanchet worked in health systems research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 2010 and was the co-founder and co-director of the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre.