Prof Naoki Kondo

Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Epidemiology, Graduate School of Medicine and School of Public Health, Kyoto University

Naoki Kondo, MD, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Epidemiology at the Kyoto University School of Public Health. His research focuses on the social determinants of health, health inequalities, and policies and community-based approaches to addressing them. More recently, he has been advancing the emerging field of cultural epidemiology, exploring how cultural determinants and cultural participation shape health and proposing cultural well-being as an important dimension of population health.

He is Deputy Principal Investigator of the Japan Gerontological Evaluation Study (JAGES), a nationwide cohort study involving more than 200,000 older adults. Through JAGES, he has investigated how community and social environments can promote healthy and equitable longevity.

Professor Kondo serves as a member of the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Social Connection. He also advises the Japanese government through expert committees of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and other national policy bodies.

He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in journals including The Lancet, The BMJ, and the International Journal of Epidemiology.