Since 1980, Dr. César Chelala has worked as a consultant on planning, monitoring and evaluation of public health projects for several international agencies. He earned his medical degree in 1964. In 1971, he went to the United States and worked as a researcher in molecular genetics and pharmacology at New York City’s Public Health Research Institute and later at the New York University School of Medicine. He has conducted health-related missions in over 50 countries for USAID, UNICEF, WHO, PAHO, UNFPA, UNDP, UNESCO, Capital Development Fund, the Guttmacher Institute, the Mexican Foundation for Health, World Education, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Carnegie Corporation.

He has written scientific and medical articles for The Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, Molecular and General Genetics, the British Medical Journal and Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 1979, he co-authored an article (with Paul H. Hoeffel) about the “disappeared” in Argentina. The article, Missing or Dead in Argentina: The Desperate Search for Thousands of Abducted Victims, was published as a cover story in The New York Times Magazine. The authors received for this article the 1979 Overseas Press Club of America award for the best article on human rights.

In addition, Dr. Chelala has received two national journalism awards from ADEPA, the organization of newspaper editors in Argentina. In 2015 he received the Chaski award from Taller Latino Americano, a leading cultural institution in New York, and that same year he was awarded the Cedar of Lebanon Gold Medal from The House of Lebanon, in Tucumán, Argentina. He is a contributing editor and global health consultant for The Globalist, a contributing writer for The Japan Times, and a foreign correspondent for The Middle East Times International (Australia).

He has written for several newspapers around the world, among them: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The China Daily, The Daily News Egypt, The Japan Times, The Moscow Times, The Globalist, The News International (Pakistan), Le Monde Diplomatique (France), Asahi Shimbun (Japan), Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), The Daily Star (Beirut), The Swiss Review of World Affairs, La Nación (Argentina), La Gaceta de Tucumán (Argentina), ViceVersa Magazine, The International Herald Tribune, The Harvard International Review, The Women International Perspectives (WIP), The Baltimore Sun, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Times of Israel (Jerusalem).

He is also the winner of a First Prize in Photography of Women in Development from the Pan American Health Organization.