The Importance of Nutrition for Optimizing Growth in Adolescence

Dr Zulfiqar A. Bhutta is the Distinguished University Professor and Founding Director of the Institute for Global Health and Development and the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, at the Aga Khan University. He holds the Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Co-Director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health, unique joint appointments. He also holds adjunct professorships at several leading Universities globally. Dr Bhutta is currently the Chairman of the Coalition of Centre’s in Global Child Health and the Executive Director of the NCD Child Secretariat based at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. He is a member of the Health Task Force for the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Institutes of Health, Pakistan. He also chairs the Biological & Health Sciences committee of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. 

Dr Bhutta has served on several international editorial advisory boards including the Lancet, BMJ, PLoS Medicine, PLoS ONE, PloS NTD, BMC Public Health, Population Health Metrics and the Cochrane CDPLG and ARI groups. He has published nine books, 140 book chapters, and over 1100 indexed publications to date, including > 250 in the world’s leading journal Lancet alone. He has received several awards over the years and was admitted to the National Academy of Medicine in October 2018, the highest academic and scientific platform in North America. Also, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, the oldest science body in the UK in 2020. 

Presently, Professor Bhutta is leading two global academic consortia; one working on integrated investments to improve child and adolescent health and nutrition across the sustainable development goals and a multi-national working group on addressing women and children’s health in response to COVID-19.