Profile
Amos Laar is a Professor of Public Health Nutrition in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. Upon receiving academic training in Nutrition, Public Health, and Bioethics, he spent the decade spanning 2005 and 2015 exploring how the “socio-cultural, socio-ethical, and medico-ethical dimensions of public health” could be leveraged to promote the health of women living with HIV. From this work, the book, “Social Public Health” originates. Currently, his research and professional practice focus on two distinct, yet related areas of public health: leveraging bioethics (particularly food ethics, public health ethics, health and human rights); and public health nutrition (food systems, food environments, and their nexus with nutrition-related non-communicable diseases) for global public health.
Dr. Laar is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the IDRC-funded ‘MEALS4NCDs project’, which is providing Measurements, Evaluation, Accountability and Leadership Support for NCDs prevention in Ghana. He is the PI of the IDRC/Rockefeller Foundation-funded ‘Healthier Diets 4 Healthy Lives (HD4HL) Project’, which aims develop, validate and build consensus for a fit-for-local-purpose nutrient profiling model that allows for implementation of food-based policies. He is also the PI of the– Advocating for Health (A4H) Project, which aims to create a favorable environment and stakeholder buy-in for food-related fiscal policies in Ghana. With funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Prof. Laar is co-leading a project that is building sustainable bioethics capacity in Ghana. This project facilitated the establishment of MSc Programme in Bioethics at the University of Ghana School of Public Health – the first ever bioethics programme in Ghana.
Dr. Laar has published theoretically driven, methodologically varied, and policy-relevant papers spanning health and human rights, pandemic ethics, food systems, food environments, and nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs). He has received local and international recognition – serving as Ghana’s Representative at international meetings, Invited Speaker or Keynote Speaker on numerous occasions. He was an invited participant of the 66th Session of the UN-General Assembly Meeting in New York, 2011. In 2019, he was recognized in the Lancet, for their efforts at combating nutrition-related NCDs in Ghana: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(19)30216-5/fulltext Prof. Laar is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.