Francisco Palencia-Sánchez is a physician, with a Master’s degree in Clinical Epidemiology and a Ph.D. in Public Health. He is currently affiliated with Pontificia Universidad Javeriana as a professor and researcher in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Faculty of Medicine. He coordinates the Public Health course for medical students and leads the academic management of the graduate program in Occupational Health and Safety within the same faculty.

His academic and professional trajectory has focused on the analysis of occupational health, epidemiology, and public health from an interdisciplinary perspective that integrates applied research, teaching, and social outreach. In Colombia, he has served as adjunct professor in graduate programs in Occupational Health and Safety at the National University of Colombia, as well as in health management programs at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano.

Internationally, he is recognized for being the first professor from the Faculty of Medicine to lead a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) initiative, establishing academic partnerships with leading Latin American institutions such as Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. He has also been an invited lecturer at Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí (Ecuador), Universidad Internacional Iberoamericana de México, and Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre (Brazil).

His research interests in the field of occupational health include psychosocial factors at work, occupational epidemiology, preventive and occupational medicine, labor trajectory transitions, transformations in the world of work, and workplace well-being. In public health, his work focuses on public policy, health promotion, disease prevention, and population well-being. In epidemiology, his interests include health data analytics, occupational epidemiology, methodologies, and systematic literature reviews.

He has led and participated in numerous research, consulting, and outreach projects at both national and international levels. Notable examples include:

• Update of the Colombian consensus for the care and management of COVID-19

• A qualitative study on mental health in healthcare professionals during the post-pandemic period in Bogotá

• Special Management and Protection Plan for the San Juan de Dios Hospital

• Strengthening of INVIMA’s national programs in technovigilance, reagent surveillance, and biovigilance

• Design and implementation of an epidemiological surveillance system for informal workers in Bogotá

• Development of occupational health and safety profiles in Ibero-American countries

• Research on neglected diseases and early warning systems in low- and middle-income countries for the detection of communicable diseases

He has published extensively in indexed scientific journals, book chapters, and technical reports, and has been a speaker at numerous national and international conferences. He is currently a member of the Preventive and Social Medicine Research Group at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and the Health and Work Research Group at the National University of Colombia.

He actively supports undergraduate and graduate students, contributes to curricular development, and participates in the co-construction of disciplinary knowledge. He has served as a peer reviewer for several prestigious journals including Frontiers, BMC Public Health, Food Science & Nutrition, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Heliyon, and Evidence-based HRM: A Global Forum for Empirical Scholarship.

Committed to bridging academia and industry, he has served as an epidemiology consultant for the Institute for Health Technology Assessment (IETS) and the National University of Colombia, as well as a public health advisor to the Bogotá Health Department. In the field of occupational health, he has consulted for the National Police, Colombian Air Force, occupational risk insurers, SST consulting firms, and a wide range of organizations from small businesses to large corporations. He was also appointed by the Ministry of Labor as an ad hoc physician for the Regional Disability Rating Board in Bogotá.