Frank Tanser is a South African infectious disease epidemiologist whose research has focused on the epidemiology of important public health problems in rural African communities. His pivotal work over the past 25 years in a South African rural community decimated by HIV has provided substantial insights into the evolving and dynamic nature of the HIV epidemic and its key drivers, informing HIV prevention and treatment efforts in sub- Saharan Africa.
His research into the population-level impacts of the antiretroviral therapy (ART) roll-out has led to wide-reaching and rapid changes to government policy on how ART programs in Africa are designed and implemented. In particular, a seminal study he published in the journal Science was the first to show that nurse-led and decentralised HIV programs in rural areas could be successful in reducing HIV transmission at the population-level.
Frank was recently honoured by the South African Medical Research Council with the Gold Medal Scientific Achievement Award in recognition of the excellence of his research. The award recognises "outstanding scientists who have undertaken seminal research that has impacted on the health of populations in developing countries." In 2019, The Royal Geographical Society awarded him the Back Medal for “conducting applied research that has made an outstanding contribution to the development of national or international public policy”.
Frank is currently Professor of Global Health and the Director of the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis (SACEMA) at Stellenbosch University. He is also director of Population Health Innovation at the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI) at Stellenbosch. In addition, he holds a Senior Faculty position at the Africa Health Research Institute, KwaZulu-Natal.
He was a founder member of the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies (which became the Africa Health Research Institute) and was responsible for building Africa’s first comprehensive population-based GIS system at the Centre. He is also the founding director of the Lincoln International Institute for Rural Health, UK conducting world-class research into the greatest health issues facing rural communities both locally and globally. He has published papers in the World’s highest-ranking international journals (including Science, Nature, Science Translational Medicine, PNAS, PLoS Medicine, ELife and The Lancet) and is one of the leaders in his research field.
To date he has published more than 270 articles and his work has been cited over 43,000 times (H-index = 71). He is on the editorial board of The Lancet HIV and has been a member of several key national and international committees including the International Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee to the director of UNAIDS. To date, he has raised over 80 million US dollars in competitive research funding. His grants include five NIH R01 awards as Principal Investigator.
