Biography

Rodrigo Guerrero Velasco, a physician graduated from the Del ValleUniversity (Universidad del Valle), with a PhD in Public Health from Harvard University, has devoted most of his life to the search of community welfare from different perspectives. In the health field, in his position as Director General of the Del Valle University Hospital and as Minister of Health in Cali, and later from the Carvajal Foundation in association with FES Foundation, Dr. Guerrero Velasco contributed to the improvement of the Cali health system. In the academic field, as dean of the School of Medicine and as Rector of the Del Valle University, he promoted policies towards the improvement of quality education in the region. He is the author of the text book Epidemiología, widely spread among Spanish speaking health students. In 1992, after local elections, he took office as Mayor of Cali and developed the Desarrollo, Seguridad y Paz (Development, Safety and Peace) program (DESEPAZ), where he applied epidemiologic principles for the management of urban violence. The principles of this model have been applied very successfully in several cities of Colombia and have been spread throughout the world. After leaving the Mayor’s Office, he worked closely for three years with the Pan American Health Organization in the Program for the Prevention of Violence, and as advisor of the Inter-American Development Bank and World Health Organization programs of Coexistence and Security. He is currently advisor to the Inter-American Coalition for the Prevention of Violence and to several other national and international organizations. Since 1999, Rodrigo Guerrero has served as the President of VallenPaz Corporation, a non-for-profit organization whose primary goal is to contribute to the reestablishment of a pacific coexistence through the recovery of the social structure and the development of new productive systems in conflict areas of the Colombian southwest region.