Professor Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, director of the department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra, has received the award National Medicine 2021 in the category of Preventive Medicine, awarded by El Suplemento. The act of submission was held last Monday, April 12, in a gala organized at the Westin Palace Hotel in Madrid, where thirty awards were given, among professionals, clinics, hospitals and entities of Spanish medicine.

The Full Professor of the University of Navarra, also Full Professor visitor at Harvard University and researcher of the CIBEROBN, has been awarded for his contributions as an epidemiologist to the prevention of cardiovascular diseases and other chronic diseases, especially thanks to the per diem expenses Mediterranean. He emphasized, in his words on receiving the award, the gratitude he owes to "many people and institutions", who have made it possible "to get this far", and first of all to the University of Navarra, which placed its trust in him 25 years ago by entrusting him with the challenge to start from scratch a Public Health department .

He also highlighted the collaborative work carried out in the PREDIMED study and in the CIBEROBN, whose researchers are making scientific contributions of great global importance. "Right now, the Mediterranean per diem expenses is the gold standard, the ideal model of healthy per diem expenses in the United States, China, Australia, Canada and more countries," he said. "It is due to the great team multidisciplinary throughout Spain, 23 centers working together, which have given the Spanish research a very strong leadership in nutrition and preventive lifestyles." He brought up one of the articles published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which "three years after its publication, according to Altmetric was issue one among more than 14,000 articles in this journal, in terms of social and scientific impact."

New book on the pandemic

He also thanked the publishing house Planeta for the scientific knowledge dissemination work he has been able to share in his books Salud a ciencia cierta ( Planeta, 2018) and ¿Qué comer? Ciencia y conciencia para resistir (Planeta, 2020), which have become bestsellers. "The proceeds from these publications have gone to research in nutrition and public health," he said. In addition, he announced the forthcoming publication, also by the same publishing house Planeta, of a new book La Sanidad en llamas. Un internista y un epidemiólogo ante la pandemia, written together with his brother Julio, an internist, and which aims to be a tribute to the role of healthcare professionals in the pandemic.

The department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, directed by Professor Martínez-González, has more than thirty professionals, who contribute more than 100 scientific publications each year in high impact journals in medicine, nutrition and public health. At all times, the award winner made it clear that the merit of this award corresponds to this great team and not to him.