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Christine Stabell Benn, MD, PhD, DMSc, MAE, has worked at the Bandim Health Project in Guinea-Bissau (BHP, www.bandim.org) since 1993. Dr. Benn holds a position as Professor in Global Health at University of Southern Denmark. She is also Chair at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study.

Dr. Benn’s research focuses on health interventions and their effect on overall health in real life. She has observed that vaccines and vitamins affect overall health to a much larger extent than explained by their well-known specific effects. In addition to their specific effects, they have so-called “non-specific effects”, which may be at least as important as their specific effects. These effects are often sex-differential, and they may affect each other, making the sequence and combination of health interventions more important than usually thought.  

Her main contribution has been to take the observations on non-specific effects of vaccines and vitamins forward to randomized controlled trials, being the PI for many trials testing the overall health effects of vitamin A supplementation, BCG vaccine, oral polio vaccine and early measles vaccine.

She also bridged to immunology and explored the biological mechanisms underlying the non-specific effects of vitamin A supplementation and vaccines.

She has taken the observations back to Denmark, to test in randomized trials and observational studies whether non-specific effects of vaccines are important in high-income settings as well.

Most recently, she has been testing whether the non-specific effects of BCG vaccine and oral polio vaccine can provide partial protection against COVID-19.

Dr. Benn is the author of more than 360 scientific paper in peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Benn (@StabellBenn) has a strong position in the public debate. She has been among the top-100 lists of most powerful people in Danish Health and the most powerful Danish researchers on social media.