Rate My Professor Zila Sanchez

Zila van der Meer Sanchez Dutenhefner is an Associate Professor (Professora Associada Livre-Docente) in Epidemiology at the Department of Preventive Medicine, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). She serves as Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine in her second term. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy-Biochemistry from the Universidade de São Paulo, followed by a master’s degree, doctoral degree, and postdoctoral training at UNIFESP. Part of her doctoral work was completed at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Social and Cultural Anthropology, and she was a Visiting Post-doctoral Fellow in Epidemiology at Michigan State University, with additional epidemiology coursework at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Columbia University.

Her research focuses on the epidemiology of alcohol and other drug use, with particular emphasis on prevention among adolescents and young adults, including binge drinking patterns and the evaluation of school- and community-based prevention programs. She directs the Núcleo de Pesquisa em Prevenção ao Uso de Drogas (Previna) at UNIFESP and has coordinated the university’s stricto sensu Graduate Program in Collective Health from 2017 to 2023. Sanchez is the author of more than 200 indexed scientific articles and is recognized as the Brazilian researcher with the highest scientific output in the field of adolescent alcohol consumption. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Prevention (Springer Nature), a member of the board of the European Society for Prevention Research, and serves on the Technical Advisory Group on Alcohol and Drug Epidemiology at the World Health Organization. She has held consultancy and expert committee roles with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Pan American Health Organization, and other international bodies, and has led research projects funded by FAPESP, CNPq, and international organizations.