Halvor Sommerfelt is a professor in epidemiology and global health at the Centre for International Health, and the Director of the Centre for Intervention Science in Maternal and Child Health (www.uib.no/en/cismac) and senior consultant at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. He has through international collaborative ventures with research groups in India, Nepal, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Zambia and South Africa, Europe, and the U.S. and with external funding from the Research Council of Norway, EU, NORAD, WHO, The Norwegian Programme for Development, Research and Education (NUFU) coordinated front-line research accompanied by capacity strengthening aimed at treating and preventing important childhood infections and promoting child growth, development and survival. His research spans basic molecular microbiological studies aimed at vaccine development, experimental immunological studies, molecular epidemiological studies, vaccine trials, and intervention trials of downstream biomedical and behavioral interventions to prevent pneumonia, diarrhea and severe bacterial infection (sepsis) to identify ways of preventing and treating these and other important childhood infections and reducing their nutritional insult.

Sommerfelt has co-authored almost 130 scientific papers reporting on original scientific work published in international peer-reviewed journals, (co-)authored 29 reviews, protocol papers, opinion papers, and letters to editors, held several lectures at research institutions in Europe, India, sub-Saharan Africa and the US, and has acted as a referee for several scientific journals. He has organized international scientific meetings on vaccine research and on maternal and child health. He holds 2 active patents, one for a vaccine candidate for childhood diarrhea, another for an ingestible untethered capsule to collect intestinal fluids.  

He was from 2001 to 2003 the Norwegian representative in the Working group and Steering committee of the planning project for the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (www.edctp.org), was in 2007 appointed to the GAVI Alliance’s Independent Assessment Committee for Advance Market Commitment for vaccines (http://www.vaccineamc.org), and a member of the epidemiology steering committee of The Global Enterics Multi-Center Study (http://medschool.umaryland.edu/GEMS). He has been an expert to several WHO advisory groups, including on non-specific effects of vaccines (https://www.who.int/immunization/research/implementation/nse_protocol_comments/en) and volunteer challenge models for developing COVID-19 vaccines (www.tinyurl.com/WHOHumanChallengeCOVID19). Sommerfelt is a member of the Data Safety Monitoring Board for WHO’s Solidarity trial(s) for COVID-19 vaccines (https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/global-research-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/accelerating-a-safe-and-effective-covid-19-vaccine).

He has supervised 14 PhD candidates, all have defended their theses.

H-index 42 (web of science); 45 (Scopus)

Sommerfelt teaches medical students, master students and PhD candidates in international health and epidemiology.

He established three courses in epidemioogy at the Centre for International Health, Dept of of Global Public Health and Primary Care, including what is now INTH321A "Experimental epidemiology", in which he also teaches.

His main areas of interst/competenece are: 

• Epidemiology with a focus on Randomized controlled trials
• Global Health
• Child Health

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

See https://wo.cristin.no/as/WebObjects/cristin.woa/wa/personVis?type=PERSON&instnr=184&bruker=mihhs

CISMAC - Centre for intervention science in maternal and child health

• Early versus late BCG vaccination in HIV-1 exposed infants (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117183/bcg)
• Impact of promoting Community initiated Kangaroo Mother Care (cKMC) with support for low birth weight infants in India (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117185/ckmc)
• Poverty and Equity cKMC (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117119/poverty-and-equity-ckmc)
• Biological Effects of cKMC (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117120/biological-effects-ckmc)
• Efficacy of umbilical cord cleansing with a single application of 4% chlorhexidine for the prevention of newborn infections in Uganda (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117128/chlorhexidine)
• The case-control with follow-up study: An efficient and ethically justifiable alternative to the randomized control trial? (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117112/ccf-instead-rct)
• Zinc as an adjunct treatment for reducing case fatality due to clinical severe infection in young infants (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/117181/zinc-sepsis)
• SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 in women and their infants in Kampala, Uganda (https://www.uib.no/en/cismac/152198/comac)

ETECVac (https://www.uib.no/en/rg/etecvac). The project aims to develop vaccines against the important diarrheagenic bacterium enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), and has developed a patented toxoid which is now being evaluated for inclusion in an enteric vaccine development program by Valneva (https://valneva.com). The project has also established the to date only Scandinavian Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM). In this model, we infect volunteers with ETEC so that approximately three quarters of them develop diarrhea. The model is an effective means to, in so called phase IIb trials, experimentally evaluate the efficacy of ETEC vaccine candidates, such as those developed by ETECVac.  For further details, please see:

• https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/project/FORISS/185872
• https://prosjektbanken.forskningsradet.no/en/project/FORISS/234364?