Van Charles Lansingh, MD has worked throughout Latin America, North America, South East Asia, and the Pacific, making major contributions to reducing blindness and restoring eye sight. He obtained his medical degree in 1987 from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico in Mexico City and completed his ophthalmology residency and postgraduate work there. In 2005, Dr. Lansingh was awarded a PhD in health sciences from the University of Melbourne in Australia after field work with Aboriginal communities in Central Australia in which he studied the effects of the SAFE (surgery, antibiotic therapy, facial cleanliness promotion and environmental improvements) strategy for trachoma.
In his career, Dr. Lansingh has held several positions in Papua New Guinea, Australia and Latin America. From 2004 through 2015, he served as the regional coordinator in Latin America for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and the VISION 2020 program. In 2012, he was named the voluntary assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Miller School of Medicine of the University of Miami and one year later, the director of outreach activities of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Tennessee.
In 2015, Dr. Lansingh joined HelpMeSee as the medical officer for Latin America, working closely with its leadership promoting sound surgical training, public health strategies and sustainable eye care solutions to eliminate blindness caused by cataract.
Additionally, he holds an honorary appointment as the director of international affairs of the Mexican Institute of Ophthalmology in Queretaro, Mexico.
Dr. Lansingh presents during a HelpMeSee training session for ophthalmic nurses in Lima, Peru.
Dr. Lansingh was a member and main editor of the editorial committee of VISION 2020’s Latin America quarterly from 2005 to 2015. In addition, he was the chief editor for the spanish edition of the Journal of Community Eye Health from September 2006 to January 2015 and remains a member of the international edition’s editorial board. Dr. Lansingh has been a focal person for the URE (uncorrected refractive errors) task force of the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) since January 2008, and has served on their Diabetic Retinopathy committee since 2014. He is a member of the Academy's Ophthalmic News & Education Network Advisory Panel and a member of the Group of Experts for the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization. More recently, Dr. Lansingh accepted the positions of director of advocacy for the ICO, vice president of the Centro Mexicano de Salud Visual Preventiva (Mexican Center for Preventive Visual Health), coordinator of the IMO Cochrane Associated Center, and as coordinator of the ICO exams in Queretaro.
He is a member of various international professional organizations, including the Vision and Hearing Loss Expert Group, Non Communicable Diseases Cluster in the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors Study, Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology, Asociación de Investigación en Visión y Oftalmología, International Society of Epidemiology and Geographic Ophthalmology, Association and the Association for Vision and Research in Ophthalmology.
Dr. Lansingh is a peer reviewer for Eye, Ophthalmic Epidemiology, Pan-American Journal of Public Health, Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology and Expert Review of Ophthalmology, just to mention a few. He is also the associate editor of Oftalmología Clinica y Experimental and Community Eye Health Journal, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Ophthalmology. Dr. Lansingh has authored or co-authored over 110 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 12 chapters in books, and several posters. He is a frequent lecturer at international meetings and courses.