Stephen Tollman

Steve directs the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), responsible for its health and sociodemographic platform (HDSS) and multidisciplinary research spanning the life course. He is a research professor in the School of Public Health, Faculty in the Harvard Center for Population & Development, and was first Board Chair of IN DEPTH, a research network led from the global South. The versatile HDSS platform — covering a 'whole-population' cohort of 120,000 people in 31 rural villages — supports observational and intervention studies including policy evaluations investigating critical health transitions, their implications, and context-appropriate responses. Steve co-leads Africa's pre-eminent programme on population ageing. He was instrumental gaining government investment to establish SAPRIN, a network of population-based research platforms building the evidence base to address health inequalities in SA.