Professor Avendano leads the Health Economics and Policy Unit at the Department of Epidemiology and Health Systems in Unisanté at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine University of Lausanne. He also co-directs the Lausanne Centre for Health Economics, Behavior and Policy.
His research examines how public policies, social transformations and health systems influence global health and inequalities. His research has shown that public policies in education, pensions, long-term care systems, health care insurance, poverty, employment and urban planning shape physical and mental health and contribute to health inequalities. His work is interdisciplinary and at the crossroads between epidemiology and public health, economics, social sciences, demography and public policy. Based on longitudinal data, his research uses quasi-experimental designs, natural experiments and randomised controlled trials to establish the causal impact of public policies.
He has published over 150 papers and secured more than CHF 35 million in competitive funding from major international funders, including the Swiss Scientific National Foundation (SNSF), the European Commission, the European Research Council (ERC), the US National Institutes of Helath (NIH), the UK Research and Innovation councils, the Wellcome Trust, and the Dutch Scientific Organization. In 2024, he was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy.
Thematic areas of research
His research focuses on three main thematic areas.
First, he studies how intersectoral policies shape healthy ageing, drawing on international longitudinal ageing studies. As a co-investigator at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Gateway Exposome Coordinating Centre, he leads work examining how global policies relate to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Second, he investigates interventions and policies to address youth mental health needs in low- and middle-income countries, leading several RCTs that test how digital and community-based approaches can be integrated into social protection systems.
Third, he uses quasi-experimental methods and longitudinal data linked to policy indicators to study the drivers of health inequities and how government actions may reduce—or sometimes widen—these inequities.
Across these areas, he works closely with international organisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), UNICEF, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD), and the European Commission to support the translation of research on ageing, youth mental health, and health inequalities into policy and practice.
Completed Projects
Together with Prof Frank Van Lenthe (Erasmus University), he shared the coordination of Mindmap (2016-2020), a European Commission funded project to examine the impact of urban environments and policies on the mental health of ageing populations across 15 cities in Europe, Canada and the US.
He was also co-Investigator in the Lifepath project (2015-2019), a major European consortium to understanding the causes of health inequalities in Europe. He was co-PI in the WORKLONG project (2015-2019), an ESRC- European Joint Initiative project to examine the impact of changes to retirement and pension policies on health.
He was co-PI in the ASSET project, an NIHR-funded research unit where he leads work with Ann Kelly and Nele Jensen to examine the health equity impact of interventions to strengthen health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Avendano contributed to the development of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), where he was involved from 2004-2010, overseeing the design of the health module. He collaborated with Professor Johan Mackenbach (Erasmus MC) in several projects that used data from mortality registries and census to examine inequalities in mortality in Europe.
He has also worked with several longitudinal and birth cohort studies, including the the UK Understanding Society survey, the UK Millennium Cohort Study, the UK Birth Cohorts, the French Constances study, the US Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), the Dutch Globe Study, and the English Longitudinal study of Ageing (ELSA), among others.