Fred Paccaud is the Director of the Institute of social and preventive medicine, a part of the University Hospital Center in Lausanne. About 160 collaborators are working at IUMSP in the areas of epidemiology and prevention of chronic diseases, health services research, and biostatistics. He is Professor of epidemiology and public health at the Faculty of biology and medicine of the University of Lausanne (www.unil.ch). The main fields of activity of Fred Paccaud are (i) the epidemiology and prevention of cardiometabolic conditions, including health transition in low- and middle income countries and epidemiology of longevity, (ii) the evaluation of public health interventions, and (iii) the development of population-based health information systems.