Dr Alarcos Cieza is Head of the Management of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCD) Unit at the Department of NCDs and Mental Health of the World Health Organization. In this role, she provides strategic leadership, management supervision and overall direction to WHO’s work on management of NCDs and integrated service delivery. Prior to this role she lead World Health Organization’s work on vision, hearing, disability and rehabilitation in her position of Unit Head, Sensory Functions, Disability and Rehabilitation. Before joining WHO in September 2014, she served as Chair and Professor of Medical Psychology at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and led a research unit for over ten years at the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Pettenkofer School of Public Health at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany. Originally from Spain, she moved to Germany after her MSc in Psychology where she received further degrees - MPH, Doctorate in Human Biology, and Habilitation in Medical Psychology and Public Health – from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University.
