Marcela Tamayo

Marcela Tamayo-Ortiz, is an environmental and occupational epidemiologist interested in the maternal-child health effects of environmental, occupational and psychosocial exposures. She is part of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Columbia, and has extensive field work and scientific experience from collaborating with the multi-institutional birth cohorts ELEMENT (Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants) and PROGRESS (Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment and Social Stressors). Her current research focuses on women’s environmental and occupational exposures and bone health and body composition.

Dr. Tamayo-Ortiz has been a strong advocate to reduce population lead exposure. She developed a sensitization program linking occupational exposures of traditional potters to environmental population wide scenarios. Her research on lead concentrations in candy has had an important impact on public awareness of this exposure in Mexico. She has been a co-investigator in the National Surveys of Health and Nutrition that have documented for the first time the prevalence of children’s lead intoxication in Mexico, and a team member of the National Program for Environmental Exposure regulation.

Before coming to Mailman School, Dr. Tamayo-Ortiz was the Head of the Occupational Health Research Department at the Mexican Social Security Institute, the largest health and social benefits provider in Latin America. During the COVID-19 pandemic she collaborated with the occupational health team that studied the impact of the pandemic and set the occupational prevention guidelines for over twenty million private sector workers.

Dr. Tamayo-Ortiz is a Fellow of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology and the Past-Chair of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) Chapter of the . She has special interest in strengthening the link between senior and young researchers from LAC.