R.L. Felipe Lobelo, MD, PhD, FAHA

Biography

R.L. Felipe Lobelo, MD, PhD, FAHA, is an associate professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Dr. Lobelo serves as a faculty member and executive committee member of Emory’s Nutrition and Health Sciences Doctoral Program. He is a member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at Winship Cancer Institute and a core faculty member of the Emory Global Diabetes Research Center. He also serves as program director for epidemiology, public health and preparedness, and as a senior consultant for population health research in the Department of Quality and Patient Safety at the Southeast Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente Georgia.

With more than two decades of experience in population health, health services research and value-based care, Dr. Lobelo has made significant contributions to the design and implementation of strategies for chronic disease prevention and control. His work focuses on translating evidence into real-world settings, building care models that close gaps and deliver measurable results at scale through lifestyle medicine, remote monitoring, patient-generated data and clinical-community linkages spanning primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases.

From 2020 to 2022 he served on the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition Science Board, and since 2025 he has served on the Sports Medicine, Research & Education Advisory Panel for the U.S. Soccer Federation. He also serves as director of the Exercise is Medicine Global Research and Collaboration Center and as principal investigator of the Heart Health United Study. He is the founder of the Soccer for Health Initiative and a member of the U.S. Medical Soccer Team.

Education

Dr. Lobelo earned his medical degree from Rosario University School of Medicine in Bogota, Colombia. He completed a specialization in clinical epidemiology and preventive medicine at the same institution, then earned his PhD in exercise science from the University of South Carolina Arnold School of Public Health. Dr. Lobelo also completed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) program, serving as an EIS officer in the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity within the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion..

Titles & Roles

• Associate Professor, Hubert Department of Global Health

  Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

Research

Dr. Lobelo focuses on cancer and other chronic disease primary, secondary and tertiary prevention via lifestyle interventions and exercise medicine.

Publications

Awards

Dr. Lobelo received the Paffenbarger-Blair Award for Research on Physical Activity Epidemiology from the American College of Sports Medicine in 2006, followed by the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award from the Department of Exercise Science at the University of South Carolina in 2008. He has been a fellow of the American Heart Association since 2012 and is actively involved in its Epidemiology and Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health councils.