Ulrich Laaser, born 1941 near Berlin, studied medicine in Berlin, Freiburg, Hamburg and Prague. He received his doctoral degree in Tuebingen for a self trial on acclimatization to an artificial tropical climate (1967), the Diploma of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1969) and the Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA (1970). After two years in francophone Niger he specialised for internal medicine at the Medical Faculty of Cologne (1978) and worked on high blood pressure and cardiovascular community intervention in Heidelberg until 1986. As director of the State Public Health Institute of Northrhine-Westphalia in Bielefeld from 1986 to 1994 he played a major role in the creation of the first academic master of public health programme in post-war Germany at the University of Bielefeld and served as Vice Dean of the new Faculty of Health Sciences in 1994/5. Until 2003 he joined the Institute of Population Research and Social Policy at the University of Bielefeld and began to work on the reconstruction of public health in the transition countries of South Eastern Europe with a focus on the establishment of postgraduate public health training programmes and Schools of Public Health. In 2008 he received the Andrija Stampar Medal from the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region. Elected as president of the World Federation of Public Health Associations for the period 2010-2012 the main interest of Ulrich Laaser in the coming years is on global public health and international cooperation.

Selected references:

Bjegovic-Mikanovic V, Laaser U: Strategic Challenges in upgrading the population’s health in the transition countries of South Eastern Europe, Editorial. Italian Journal of Public Health 6 (2009): 9-12

Razum O, Zeeb H, Laaser U (Eds.): Globalisierung – Gerechtigkeit –

Gesundheit, Einfuehrung in International Public Health. Verlag Hans Huber 2006

Hurrelmann K, Laaser U, Razum O (Hrsg.): Handbuch Gesundheitswissenschaften. Juventa-Verlag Weinheim und Muenchen: 4. vollstaendig ueberarbeitete Auflage 2006

Laaser, U.: The institutionalization of public health training and the health sciences. Public Health Reviews 30 (2002): 71-95

Forum for Public Health in South Eastern Europe: Handbooks for Teachers, Researchers and Health Professionals. Free access to the full text at http://www.snz.hr/ph-see/publications.htm