Rebecca is a doctoral candidate in Population Health Sciences studying reproductive epidemiology. Her current research interests are at the intersection of the built environment and sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice, particularly in regard to violence prevention and response and family planning. Her work aims to advance health equity and justice with an intersectional lens that is community-centered.
Sawsan Abdulrahim’s work centers human rights principles to illuminate and act upon social inequities in health across the life course, with a focus on refugee populations and labor migrants in the Arab region and beyond. She is the lead author of the Arab Watch Report 2023 on the Right to Health, a live document intended to inform policy and advocacy efforts toward achieving health for all in the Arab region.…
Founder of Association François Xavier Bagnoud and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University Albina du Boisrouvray spent her childhood in New York and her adolescence traveling around the world. She started her professional career working as a freelance journalist, most notably for Le Nouvel Observateur, after studying at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Albina Productions, her film company founded in 1969, produced 22 movies in 18 years,…
Sergio Aguayo is a Professor at the Centro de Estudios Internacionale, El Colegio de México, where he coordinates the Seminar on Violence and Peace and recently published a report investigating two mass killings in Mexico by gangs in the drug trade. The Wilson Quarterly recently published his analysis of the need for the United States and Mexico to join together to fight organized crime, and why it has not happened…
Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH, is director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights and FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights in the department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. From December 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022 Dr. Bassett was on leave from Harvard and served as New York State’s Health Commissioner. With…
Tori Cowger (she/her) is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on understanding and eliminating health inequities. Specifically, she is interested in social and structural determinants of infectious diseases and substance use related harms, health impacts of racism in the criminal legal system, geospatial methods, and social networks. Her current work blends public health research, practice, and advocacy dedicated to eliminating the unnecessary, and inequitable, and unacceptable toll of structural racism…
A. Kayum Ahmed is a South African activist-scholar who teaches health and human rights advocacy at Columbia University’s School of Public Health and serves as Special Advisor on the Right to Health at Human Rights Watch. In addition, he is a Visiting Scientist at Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, and serves as faculty co-lead on racial equity at New York City’s Pandemic Response Institute. Previously, he…
Joel Lamstein founded John Snow, Inc. with his partner Norbert Hirschhorn, M.D. in 1978. Joel is the president of John Snow, Inc., and its nonprofit arm, JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. He also serves as president of World Education, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the poor through education, economic, and social development programs. In 1973, Joel co-founded Management Sciences for Health. Joel is a…
Ruchita is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health concentrating in infectious disease epidemiology, advised by Dr. Bill Hanage. She graduated from Princeton University in 2019 with a degree in Molecular Biology and minors in Engineering Biology and Global Health and Health Policy, and additionally received an MPhil in Veterinary Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2021. Prior to coming…
Edgar Castro is a PhD student in the department of environmental health focused on studying disparities in exposure and susceptibility to air pollution, adverse temperatures, and other environmental and contextual exposures. Previously, Edgar received a BS in environmental engineering from Northeastern University.
Stefano Angeleri is an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University Belfast and Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá. He holds a PhD in Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights (University of Galway, 2019) and is the national coordinator of the Irish/UK section of the Academic Network on the European Social Charter and Social Rights. Alongside academic work, Angeleri has collaborated on research and training projects with the…
Professor Cécile Aptel’s expertise covers child rights, human rights, peace and security, humanitarian affairs, international humanitarian law, transitional and international justice. She has a long international experience, having worked and lived in Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Middle-East, and held several leadership positions in the UN, the Red Cross, universities and NGOs. Currently, she is the deputy director of UNIDIR, tackling global security issues, i.e., arms’ control and the…
Jacqueline Bhabha is a Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also the Director of Research at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. She received a first class…
Dr. Brittney N. Francis (she/her) is a social epidemiologist whose primary research seeks to document and combat how neighborhood level inequalities are shaped by anti-Black structural racism and create adverse perinatal impacts for Black birthing people residing in resource deprived neighborhoods over their lifecourse. Dr. Francis holds a dual academic appointment as an FXB Health and Human Rights Fellow & David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan…
Dr. Yara M. Asi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics. Her research agenda focuses on global health, human rights, and development in fragile populations. She is a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar to the West Bank, a 2023-2024 Non-Resident Palestinian Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and the…
Amba-Rose Atkinson (she/her) is a proud Gumbaynggirr nyami from the mid-north coast of New South Wales, undertaking a PhD at the University of Queensland. Her research explores the health impacts of Indigenous cultural practices – such as language revitalisation and cultural burning – on Country and people, emphasising the vital role of Indigenous Knowledges in addressing environmental, climate, and health challenges. Amba-Rose completed her mid-candidature in June 2023 and is…
Bilgé Ögün Bassani is the Vice Chair of Advisory committee of FXB Health of Human Rights Center at the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health. The focus of her work has been managing development, humanitarian and climate change solutions in Africa, Asia, Europe, United States and the Middle East, with the hope of contributing to change the world to be a better place for all. She served as Senior Advisor to the President of…
Dr. Satchit Balsari is Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and in the department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Balsari’s research and teaching is focused on complex humanitarian emergencies and digital health implementation science in resource poor settings. He has worked with populations affected by disaster, war and the COVID-19 pandemic…
Marissa Chan is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences within the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received her MS in Environmental Health from Harvard Chan and her BA in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College. Her research interests and work experience focus on the intersection of place-based environmental hazards and product-based exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in personal care…
Gaurab Basu, MD, MPH is a physician and founding co-director of the CHA Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy (CHEEA). He is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. At the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Dr. Basu is a Health Equity Fellow at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, and Faculty Affiliate at the FXB Center for…
Laura Chen (she/her) is a Population Health Sciences PhD student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is a social epidemiologist passionate about studying how systems of power and oppression shape population health in the US in order to better advocate for health equity and social justice. Currently, her research interests surround social and racialized stressors across the life course and chronic disease inequities, particularly thinking about the…
Catharina is an Emergency Physician who is joining the fellowship after completing her residency in Emergency Medicine at Los Angeles County & University of Southern California Residency and medical school at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Her medical training has fostered a particular interest in how climate change affects the health of traditionally underserved communities. Her efforts have been aimed at raising awareness of climate change as a…
Dr. Vasileia Digidiki is a Harvard Instructor, Director of the Harvard FXB Summer Program on Migration and Refugee Studies, and a Health and Human Rights Fellow. She is a psychologist by training with more than 11 years of experience working on issues of distress migration, human trafficking, victim blaming and child protection and serves as a Senior Associate Editor for the Behavioral Medicine, a Taylor and Francis Publications journal with…
Jen Cruz (she/her) is a Population Health Sciences PhD student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is passionate about the intersection of social epidemiology and social change — moving beyond the traditional framing of epidemiology and into action. Jen plans to work across disciplines to learn how we can best integrate epidemiological methods into community-based work and evidence-based policy development to address health inequities. Her research aims…
Ann Caroline Danielsen (she/her) is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focuses on exploring the influences of the social world on biology, and in particular the work that gender does within interlocking systems of power and oppression to generate health advantage or disadvantage throughout the lifespan. Her goal is to…
Dr. Margareta (Magda) Matache is a Lecturer on Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the co-founder and Director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University. She is also a member of the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health. Dr. Matache’s research focuses on the manifestations and…
Margaret (Maggie) Sullivan is an Instructor and Health and Human Rights Fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University as well as a Distinguished Fellow of the National Academies of Practice (NAP) in Nursing. She is a board-certified family nurse practitioner with an interest in serving immigrant patients and their families. Maggie graduated with a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree from the Harvard T.H.…
Seetha H. Davis (she/her) is a Population Health Sciences doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a medical student at Harvard Medical School. Her work focuses on how social and societal adversities in childhood and adolescence shape health across the life course, particularly for immigrant and forcibly displaced populations. She is committed to action-driven research that aims to identify,…
Laurie Garrett wrote her first bestselling book, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, while splitting her time between the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the New York newspaper, Newsday. In the 1992-93 academic years Garrett was a Fellow at Harvard, where she worked closely with the emerging diseases group, a collection of faculty concerned about the surge in epidemics of previously…
Khondaker Mohammed Mohiuddin Ekram is a Population Health Sciences doctoral student at the Environmental Health department. His research interests involve exploring the nexus between the built environment and health outcomes, and the environmental justice issues arising from this interaction, especially in marginalized communities. He received his Master of Urban and Regional Planning from Virginia Tech, and his Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning from Khulna University of Engineering & Technology…
Mihir Bhatt directs the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, which he founded in 1989. AIDMI began as a three-person team and has grown to a staff of 83 working in 11 activity centers. He is a member of the managing committee for the mumbaiVOICES project, a grassroots effort to record and discuss the Mumbai train bombing of July 11, 2006, and the response to that emergency (http://www.mumbaivoices.com). Bhatt has pushed for…
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH, is a senior fellow at the Harvard FXB Center and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. As associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, she is a faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She served as the director of the Harvard FXB Center from January 1,…
Dr. Carmel Williams is the executive editor of Health and Human Rights, the FXB Center’s flagship publication. She has held this position since 2011. Dr. Williams holds a PhD in community health, with her thesis focusing on operationalizing the right to health in aid-funded programs. Her most recent research has focused on big data and the right to health, and inequality and social rights risks in digital economies.
Matlin Gilman is a Population Health Sciences PhD candidate at Harvard University. He has worked in a range of research settings, including the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard, the United Hospital Fund, the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. He received his MPH in health and social behavior from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, his…
Since 1987, Susan Bissell’s career has focused on the rights, safety and security of children and she is currently serving on a number of Boards, teaching, and writing. Susan spent over twenty-five years working in various capacities for UNICEF, and from 2016 until 2018 led the establishment of the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children and its associated Fund. From 2009 to 2015, Susan served as Associate Director and…
Jasmine D. Graves (she/her) is a public health researcher and social impact strategist committed to dismantling systems of oppression and rebuilding a world where Black, Indigenous, and People of Color thrive. A natural problem solver, Jasmine drove public policy for nearly ten years as a former Senior Policy Advisor to New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Advisor to two New York City Health Commissioners, and Qualitative…
Sirad A. Hassan (she/her) is a Population Health Sciences doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prior to starting graduate school, Sirad earned her M.S. in Human Nutrition from Columbia University and her A.B. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University, with minors in African American Studies, African Studies, Cognitive Science, and Global Health and Health Policy. Her…
Dr. Shadiya L. Moss is a social epidemiologist and Health and Human Rights Fellow at the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University. Her research focuses on (1) how systemic and structural racism via the carceral state, and racist social policies and practices target the Black family and community, and (2) how these structures further perpetuate racial inequities in health, including psychiatric and substance use health outcomes.…
Keisha Bush is the Assistant Director of Communications for the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. She has more than twenty years of experience in communications and marketing in both the private and nonprofit sector. She is an adjunct faculty member at New Jersey City University where she teaches English and literature courses, and she teaches writing courses at The Center For Fiction. Keisha is the author of No Heaven…
Destiny A. Jackson (she/her) is a PhD student in the Population Health Sciences program based in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Through her work, she prioritizes evaluating and intervening on racial health inequities via social policy evaluation and translation, with an emphasis on intraracial differences in health outcomes and access to quality health care services by nativity, ethnicity, and degree…
Hana is a PhD student in Population Health Sciences within the Department of Epidemiology, focusing on Environmental Epidemiology. Prior to Harvard, she was an assistant epidemiologist at Emory Health Services Research Center where she worked on projects aiming to reduce racial disparities among kidney transplant candidates and recipients, and served on the data team for the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative. Her research interests include the intersection of…
Professor Emily Y. Y. Chan is director of the Collaborating Centre at Oxford University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong for Disaster and Medical Humanitarian Response, director of the Centre of Global Health, convener of the Climate Change and Health Study Group, and a member of the faculty of medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Apart from being a public health research expert, she is also an…
Gerlinde Munshi is the FXB Center’s Assistant Director of Finance. Gerlinde has a long working experience in public health. Initially a researcher and program evaluator, over the years, she moved to research administration. Most recently, she served as the Administrative Director for the Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, a position she held from 2010 to 2021. Gerlinde is originally from Germany.
Matt is a PhD candidate in the Population Health Sciences program at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in the Department of Nutrition. His research is focused on evaluating existing and potential nutrition policies and programs that are poised to reduce cardiometabolic disease, with a particular emphasis on applying causal inference and simulation based methods. He is currently supporting projects related to the advertising and sales of…
Victor A. Lopez-Carmen, MPH, is a Dakota and Yaqui writer, Indigenous health advocate, and current student at Harvard Medical School. He is Co-Founder of the Ohiyesa Premedical Program at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Translations for our Nations, which translated accurate COVID-19 information into over 40 Indigenous languages from over 20 different countries. Over the past decade, he has advocated for Indigenous youth health across the UN system as…
Dr. Marie Plaisime is an FXB Health and Human Rights Fellow and National Science Foundation (NSF) post-doctoral fellow. Her research investigates racial bias training in medical education and clinical practice, race-based medicine, algorithmic bias, and health policy. She applies critical quantitative, computational, & mixed methodologies to detect, examine, and quantify how structural racism in medicine jeopardizes healthcare delivery, access, and quality. She completed her PhD in Medical Sociology at Howard…
Tabitha Lumour-Mensah (she/hers) is a first-year Population Health Sciences PhD student in the Harvard T.H. Chan Department of Environmental Health. She is concentrating in environmental epidemiology and her research interests center around how the epigenome can help us to understand the wide range of health effects associated with environmental exposures arising from inequity in water and housing quality. Tabitha is from Nungua, Ghana and grew up in New Jersey. She…
Rebecca is an Instructor and the Director of the Child Protection Program which includes the cross-Harvard Child Protection Certificate and the G. Barrie Landry Child Protection Professional Training program. Led in conjunction with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, these pedagogical initiatives provide interdisciplinary training for current Harvard students pursuing careers related to child wellbeing, as well as for mid-career professionals already working in this space. Additionally, Rebecca is the Program and Strategy…
Erin McGuinness is a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) student at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Clinical Social Worker. She has devoted her career to addressing community mental health issues, with a particular emphasis on trauma and immigration. Most recently, Erin worked as a Behavioral Health Services Clinical Supervisor at La Clinica de Familia, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in southern New Mexico. Erin…
Sam is a PhD student in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Their research interests focus on community engagement and communication to advance health equity. Their work is inspired by their background in media arts and media studies, as well as a desire to create more room for institutional support of populations experiencing health disparities in Chicago.
