Two Stanford researchers won the 2025 Rosenkranz Prize for their bold public health efforts in Mexico—tackling the urgent threat of antimicrobial resistance and designing a national colorectal cancer screening program for those most at risk.

The Dr. George Rosenkranz Prize is awarded by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Health Policy to researchers doing innovative work to improve health in low- to middle-income countries. It is endowed by the family of the late scientist who devoted his career to improving health-care access across the world.

This year, the $100,000 prize was awarded to two researchers: Fernando Alarid-Escudero, PhD, an assistant professor of health policy, and Jorge Luis Salinas, MD, an assistant professor of medicine in infectious diseases at the Stanford School of Medicine.

The prizewinners were announced at the Rosenkranz Global Health Policy Research Symposium, a daylong event spotlighting cutting-edge research aimed at improving health worldwide. Sir Peter Piot gave the keynote lecture, giving an overview of the modern global health movement—and what keeps him up at night, yet gives him hope.

“Both Prize winners are focused on using rigorous and innovative approaches to address practical and quantitatively important causes of health burden in Mexico—antimicrobial resistance and colorectal cancer,” said Grant Miller, PhD, MPP, professor of health policy and chair of the Rosenkranz Prize selection committee. “Through strong partnerships, these projects have tremendous potential not only for top-notch scholarly contributions, but also for real-world impact.” 

Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the 4th most diagnosed cancer in Mexico and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the Latin American nation. Alarid-Escudero notes that colorectal cancer mortality has increased by nearly fivefold from 1990 to 2020, despite it being one of the few cancers that is preventable.

Mexico as a whole lacks both the budget and the capacity to provide a population-wide, average-risk CRC screening program. Instead, decision makers in Mexico aim to establish a CRC screening program targeting a subset of individuals at high risk, for whom the benefits can be higher. For example, first-degree relatives of patients diagnosed with CRC are at an increased risk, facing approximately a two- to threefold elevation in CRC risk. Yet the country has yet to establish a CRC screening program for high-risk populations.

“Mexico has limited resources and is currently unable to perform a population-wide screening program,” said Alarid-Escudero, a decision scientist who develops statistical models to identify cost-effective prevention, control and treatment policies.

“Mexico’s Ministry of Health officials reached out, asking me to find ways to implement a cost-effective screening program—and I wanted to make a difference in my country by using my expertise and modeling infrastructure to find a subgroup of people who could benefit the most from screening for CRC,” he said.

Alarid-Escudero said he jumped on the assignment because “it’s rare that there is a political will, a health need, scientists and enough data to collectively find and implement a solution to an important health problem.”

He hopes to develop a cost-effective screening program for individuals at high risk for colorectal cancer and help implement that program nationwide. His team also plans to train researchers in Mexico to expand the work and apply it to other types of cancer.

Antimicrobial Resistance

The World Health Organization has declared AMR—when bacteria or viruses stop responding to medicines, such as antibiotics—one of the world’s top public health threats.  It estimates that bacterial AMR was directly responsible for 1.27 million deaths and contributed to 5 million deaths around the world in 2019.

Salinas is working on a project to test and deploy scalable, cost-effective monitoring systems to detect antimicrobial-resistant genes in wastewater in Mexico, which saw more than 88,000 deaths attributed to or associated with antimicrobial resistance in 2019. According to one study, the number of AMR deaths in Mexico is higher than deaths from chronic respiratory diseases and infections, TB and other noncommunicable diseases.

“Antimicrobial resistance research is important because AMR limits treatment options for infections throughout the world,” Salinas said. “We risk losing ground in medical progress if patients develop infectious complications that can’t be treated.”

To tackle these challenges, Salinas and his team at Stanford and Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health plan to develop a scalable system to detect antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes in the country’s wastewater. They aim to create an affordable tool that can track AMR transmission from healthcare facilities to communities, enabling targeted WASH interventions—clean water, sanitation, and hygiene—and help local officials use resources more effectively.

“We hope to highlight that antimicrobial resistance not only is spread person to person, or while on treatment, but also through the environment, in this case through water and the food we eat,” Salinas said, adding that scientists still don’t fully understand how AMR is transmitted. “If we don’t know how it’s spread, we can’t stop it.”

Watch Video of Prize Announcement: