Departmental Affiliations
Center & Institute Affiliations
Research Interests
manuel, franco, epidemiology, prevention, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, social epidemiology, healthy food availability, stores, neighborhood
Experiences & Accomplishments
Manuel Franco trained both in Madrid, Spain and Berlin, Germany to obtain his MD. As Fulbright Scholar he came to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to obtain his PhD and Post Doctoral fellowship working in the Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA study) in the Department of Epidemiology.
Dr. Franco´s work focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and its major risk factors. Manuel Franco studies how different social characteristics relate to CVD and CVD risk factors as dietary patterns, hypertension, diabetes and obesity. He is particularly interested on food environment and the risk of CVD. He studies population characteristics and CVD mortality to highlight the relevance of population strategies to prevent CVD.
His methodological interest include the measurement of social and neighbourhood characteristics related to population health outcomes as well as psychosocial individual traits related to health outcomes.
Research Interests:
- Social epidemiology
- Neighborhood health effects
- Cardiovascular disease epidemiology
- Cardiovascular disease prevention
- Epidemiological methods
Dr. Franco teaches courses on social epidemiology, cardiovascular epidemiology and cardiovascular prevention.
To check the latest version of his CV, please click here
Honors & Awards
- 2011 – 15 FIS (Fund for Health Research) Project Funded by the Spanish Government
- 2010 – 15 Ramón y Cajal Fellowship (Spanish Government Award)
- 2010 – 14 Marie Curie Fellowship (European Union Award)
- 2005 - 08 Center for a Livable Future, Innovation Grant
- 2002 – 06 Fulbright Scholar, sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Health and the US Department of State
- 1995 – 98 Erasmus Fellowship (European Union) Humboldt University Berlin, Germany
Select Publications
Franco M, Bilal U, Guallar E, Sanz G, Gómez A, Fuster V and Cooper R, Analysis of the Last Three Decades of Cardiovascular Epidemiology in Spain: Looking into a Future of Prevention. Under review
Moore LV, Diez-Roux AV, and Franco M. Measuring Availability of Healthy Foods: Agreement between directly measured and surveyed data. American Journal of Epidemiology. epub January 24, 2012 doi:10.1093/aje/kwr445
Franco M, Cooper R, Bilal U, Fuster V. Control of CHD risk factors and evidence-based therapies; Joint efforts for CHD prevention in Spain. Rev Esp Cardiol 2011;64:962-964
Franco M, Cooper R, Bilal U, Fuster V. Challenges and Opportunities for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. American Journal of Medicine. 2011 Feb;124(2):95-102.
Stark S, Franco M, Gittelsohn J, Zonderman A, Evans M, Kuczmarski M, Gary-Webb T. Healthy food availability and the association with body mass index in Baltimore City, Maryland. Public Health Nutr. 2011 Jan 28:1-7.