Dr. Jose M Rodriguez-Llanes

Jose is a PlanAdapt Fellow, based in Cadiz, Spain.

He has researched, lectured and coordinated programmes focussed on population and community health in crises, including those connected to climate extremes, earthquakes or armed conflict. During his years in research positions at the University of Louvain in Brussels (2009-16) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (2016-22), Jose collaborated with academics, NGOs, EU institutions, and international organisations across five continents. He has participated in EU-funded research projects on assessing the health and socio-economic impacts of disasters and adaptation pathways in Europe and Asia (MICRODIS), measuring resilience to disasters and their determinants across communities in Europe (emBRACE) and more recently contributed for four years, and led on its final year the RESIFOOD project aiming at investigating food security resilience to shocks in selected African countries (i.e., Niger, Mali and Cameroon), its measurement and drivers. He also coordinated and convened a masters on public health in disasters on its early editions, attracting and supervising international students, co-designed and delivered by University of Oviedo, Karolinska Institutet and University of Louvain.

Jose’s interests include understanding impact, vulnerability, adaptation and resilience to climate shocks and crises in general, with no restrictions on the approaches. Rather than persisting on a predetermined approach to answer a question, it is the understanding of the question itself that should guide the choice of methods and approaches, qualitative or quantitative, single or multi-pronged. Putting communities at the heart of the research, considering their needs and local context is key in his opinion to achieving ground success, adoption and transformation.

Over the years, Jose has provided his expertise and delivered work on potential climate change impact indicators to WHO, contributed to technical advisory groups on the International EMDAT database, trained experts from the ECDC, MSF, UNICEF or World Vision on assessing public health in emergencies during Summer professional courses organised by University of Louvain. He advised the EU on resilience policy documents and acted as a field observer of FAO/WFP-led assessment of droughts in Sri Lanka. He also trained staff from the Voluntary Health Association of India to collect data via questionnaires and anthropometric measurements in young children in Odisha. More recently, he participated in the task force on nutrition game changers during the preparatory discussions of the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 and is a member of the C-MOR consortium investigating the mortality impacts of the coronavirus pandemic in 22 countries across the world.

Jose holds a PhD from the University of Louvain, Brussels (Doctorate in Public Health, specialised in Epidemiology) where he studied the effect of recurrent flooding on child nutritional status in rural India, characterising vulnerable groups and unveiling education and income levels, land tenure, diverse income generation and family planning as important pathways to improve flood adaptation.

For more info and latest publications, see Jose’s ResearchGate profile.