GOLD Speakers

Dr. Nathalie Charpak, MD

• Country: Colombia

Biography:

Dr Nathalie Charpak is currently the scientific coordinator and an attending paediatrician at the Kangaroo Mother Care program of the San Ignacio University Hospital. In addition, she is a founding member, senior researcher and director of the “Fundacion Canguro” in Bogotá, Colombia since 1994. Dr Charpak received her M.D. from the “Paris Sud” University and her paediatrician diploma from “Rene Descartes” University in Paris, France. She migrated in 1986 to Colombia where she validated her title as Paediatrician and begin in 1989 to work on the evaluation of the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) program. She is now a Colombian citizen. With several colleagues she founded in 1994 the “Fundacion Canguro” in Bogotá, an NGO devoted to research, teaching, training and direct medical care related to KMC method for premature infants that besides conducting large clinical trials on KMC has been actively disseminating the method mainly in low and middle income countries in Latin America, South East Asia, India, Africa and Eastern Europe. In 1996 in Trieste Italy she was among the group of international researchers, physicians and nurses who founded the International Kangaroo Network -INK- an international alliance devoted to collaborating, enhancing and disseminating the KMC method.

Dr Charpak continues to work as an attending paediatrician in the KMC program and his current research interest is in integrative methods for summarizing and putting into action what is known about KMC in the form of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. She is also recently involved as coordinator in conducting evaluations of long term (adolescents and young adults) neurodevelopment outcomes in preterm infants exposed or not exposed to KMC during the neonatal period.