Nathalie Charpak

I ams currently an attending paediatrician at the Kangaroo Mother Care program of the San Ignacio University Hospital. In addition I am a founding member, senior researcher and director of the “Fundacion Canguro” in Bogotá, Colombia. I received my M.D. from the “Paris Sud” University and her paediatrician diploma from “Rene Descartes” University in Paris, France. I migrated in 1986 to Colombia where I validated my title as Paediatrician and begin in 1989 to work on the evaluation of the Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) program. I am now a Colombian citizen. With several colleagues I founded in 1994 the “Fundacion Canguro” in Bogotá, an NGO devoted to research, teaching, training and direct medical care related to KMC method for premature infants that besides conducting large clinical trials on KMC I has been actively disseminating the method mainly in low and middle income countries in Latin America, South East Asia, India, Africa and Eastern Europe. In 1996 in Trieste Italy I was among the group of international researchers, physicians and nurses who founded the International Kangaroo Network -INK- an international alliance devoted to collaborating, enhancing and disseminating the KMC method. I continue to work as an attending paediatrician and my current research interest is in integrative methods for summarizing and putting into action what is known about KMC in the form of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. I was also recently involved as coordinator in conducting evaluations of long term (adolescents) neurodevelopment outcomes in preterm infants exposed or not exposed to KMC during the neonatal period, results were just published this year 2017 in Pediatrics..