No Roots, No Fruits: Marcel Tanner's Scholarly Contribution, Achievements in Capacity Building, and Impact in Global Health

Abstract

On 1 October 2022, Marcel Tanner celebrated his 70th birthday with his family and friends on the River Rhein in Basel. Trained in epidemiology (Ph.D.) and public health (MPH), Tanner devoted his entire working life to research, teaching, and capacity building. Indeed, he built up productive partnerships, fostered multinational consortia, served on numerous scientific and strategic advisory boards, and contributed measurably to improving people's health and well-being. We systematically searched the Web of Science Core Collection to identify Tanner's scholarly contribution and pursued an in-depth analysis of his scientific oeuvre including the main areas of research, pathogens, diseases, and health systems, and the geographical foci of his scholarly activities. Additionally, we examined Tanner's impact on personal and institutional capacity building in the arena of global health. We also invited a handful of colleagues to describe their experiences while working with Marcel Tanner. What transpires is a considerable breadth and depth of peer-reviewed publications in tropical medicine; epidemiology, environmental, and occupational health; parasitology; and infectious diseases. More than a third of the 622 peer-reviewed articles, the first piece published in 1978, focused on various aspects of the protozoan parasite Plasmodium and the disease it causes: malaria. Tanner trained, taught, and inspired generations of students, scientists, and practitioners all over the world. His unique ability to bring people and institutions together to work in partnership is at the heart of an impactful career in global health.

Keywords: Tanzania; capacity building; epidemiology; global health; health systems; infectious diseases; malaria; parasitology; public health.

Figure 1

Flow chart of the steps taken to identify Marcel Tanner’s peer-reviewed scholarly contributions between 1978 and 2021 that were subjected to further analyses (source: Web of Science Core Collection, search performed on 3 August 2022).

Figure 2

Yearly number of peer-reviewed articles co-authored by Marcel Tanner from 1978 to 2021, stratified by first, co-, and last author (source: Web of Science Core Collection, search performed on 3 August 2022).

Figure 3

Country affiliation of first authors in peer-reviewed articles co-authored by Marcel Tanner between 1978 and 2021. * For one first author, country affiliation could not be determined (source: Web of Science Core Collection, search performed on 3 August 2022, complemented with internet searches in case of missing information).

Figure 4

The top eight Web of Science categories for Marcel Tanner’s publications between 1978 and 2021 (source: Web of Science Core Collection, search performed on 3 August 2022).

Figure 5

Diseases and pathogens studied, as revealed by content analysis of Marcel Tanner’s research output between 1978 and 2021. Note: the figure displays the types of pathogens in the inner pie chart and the accompanying diseases in the outer ring.

Figure 6

Country-specific study sites in Marcel Tanner’s publications between 1978 and 2021.

Figure 7

Nationality of Ph.D. students supervised or co-supervised by Marce Tanner between 1978 and 2021.