Dr. Christine Stabell Benn is Professor at the Odense Patient data Explorative Network (OPEN) at the Faculty of Health Sciences at SDU and Professor in Global Health since 2013. She is also Professor and Head of the Bandim Health Project at SDU.
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Dr. Christine Stabell Benn is a medical doctor (1996), PhD (2003) and Doctor of Medical Science (2011) from the University of Copenhagen. She has worked at the Bandim Health Project in Guinea-Bissau (BHP, www.bandim.org) since 1993, starting as a medical student. She has spent postdoc time at the Danish National Hospital and the Department for Infectious Diseases and Stanford University.
In 2010 she received an ERC Starting Grant. In 2012, Dr. Christine Stabell Benn was selected by the Danish National Research Foundation to establish and lead a Center of Excellence, the Research Center for Vitamins and Vaccines.
Her research aims to document that vaccines and vitamins affect the immune system in a much more general way than previously thought. Childhood vaccines have usually been implemented without prior trials documenting their effect on overall health. It is assumed that if a vaccine prevents a target disease, then the effect on overall mortality is beneficial and proportional to the number of deaths caused by the disease. However, sometimes this turns out not to be the case. For instance, in low-income countries with high infectious disease mortality, Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) against tuberculosis and measles vaccines have stronger mortality-reducing effects than can be ascribed to the prevention of tuberculosis and measles infections, i.e. they also protect against other infectious diseases. In other words, in addition to their disease-specific effects, vaccines have “non-specific” effects.
For more information about Dr. Christine Stabell Benn, please refer to the SDU Research Portal.
