Biography

Zaza Katsarava, MD, PhD, MSc, is a head of the department of neurology at the evangelic hospital in Unna and a Professor of Neurology at the University of Essen in Germany. He is President of the European Headache Federation, Chair of the Russian Linguistic Subcommitte of the International Headache Society and Co-chair of the Georgian National Headache Association.

Dr Katsarava graduated from Medical University in Tbilisi, received training in neurology at the Medical Academy in Tbilisi and accomplished his PhD in the Institute of Physiology in Tbilisi in the Republic of Georgia. He trained further in neurology and psychiatry at the University of Essen in Germany, obtained degree of Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and a certificate in quality assurance in medicine at the Johns Bloomberg Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, USA.
Dr Katsarava's main interest focuses on headache and pain, especially the risk factors and mechanisms of chronic headache. He has used electrophysiological and imaging techniques to investigate the plasticity of the pain network in the development of chronic headache. He is a principal investigator on several of the large-scaled poplation based studies on predictors and risk factors of headache chronicity.

Dr Katsarava's interests relate to public health aspects of headache. He is working for international collaborations together with the WHO in raising awareness of the burdens attributable to headache in the countries of Eastern Europe and in improving access to headache-related healthcare in order to mitigate these burdens. He has published widely in refereed journals and elsewhere over 15 years.

Disclosures

President, EHF; Chairman, Lifting the Burden; Speaker for Allergan, Merck, Lilly, Teva and Novartis