Scholar｜Marcela Belardo

Marcela Belardo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Buenos Aires (2002), a Master’s degree in Epidemiology, Health Management, and Policy, and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (2012). Her academic background was enriched during her postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Social Medicine at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Brazil, from 2015 to 2017.

She is a permanent Associate Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Argentina’s premier scientific institution, where she has been part of the research system for over a decade—initially serving as a research fellow for six years before being appointed as a full-time researcher in 2019. Her position is based at the Institute for Social Studies in Contexts of Inequalities (IESCODE-UNPAZ), where she leads the “Health and Inequalities” research group.

With over two decades of teaching experience, she serves as an Associate Professor at the University of Buenos Aires and holds a Professorship at the National University of José C. Paz (UNPAZ).

Her research program focuses on the analysis of health policy agenda-setting, implementation, and evaluation, with particular emphasis on the historical understanding and the interests of various stakeholders, including academia, civil society, and political and economic actors. Belardo is particularly interested in the field of “translational research” or “knowledge translation”, examining how knowledge generated through laboratory research, clinical trials, and epidemiological studies is transformed into public health policies. Her approach goes beyond the development of specific interventions to investigate the complex social, political, and institutional mechanisms that facilitate or impede the application of scientific knowledge in population-level health decision-making. Additionally, she studies the dynamics of the international health agenda and its impact on regional and national health policies.

Her approach is grounded in Latin American Social Medicine and Collective Health, critical perspectives that emerged in the 1970s as alternatives to Western hegemonic biomedicine. In addition to her academic work, she provides technical advice to the Department of Research and Technical Cooperation at the Ministry of Health of the Province of Buenos Aires.

Prof. Marcela Belardo will be a visiting researcher at FDDI from April 1 to May 12, 2025.

Email: mbelardo@derecho.uba.ar