Dr. Satchit Balsari is an assistant professor in emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Since 2009, he has been affiliated with the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, where his research has contributed to advocacy on behalf of vulnerable populations affected by disasters and humanitarian crises.
His interdisciplinary interests in mobile technology, disaster response, and population health have been informed by his clinical practice in the United States and his field work around the world. His research has resulted in innovative applications of mobile, cloud-based technology to address public health challenges in mass gatherings, disasters, and humanitarian crises.
At Harvard, he directs the Indian Digital Health Network, at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, a policy-research group whose products have shaped the digital health information architecture in India. He co-directs CrisisReady.io, an interdisciplinary research-response network hosted at Harvard and Direct Relief, that promotes data-driven analysis to policy makers responding to disasters and public health emergencies.
Dr. Balsari co-teaches a university-wide course Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social and Economic Problems, led by Professor Tarun Khanna, director of Harvard’s Mittal Institute; and Societal Response to Disaster and War, with Professor Leaning at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is director of the Climate and Human Health fellowship co-hosted by the BIDMC Department of Emergency Medicine, the Center for Climate, Health and Global Environment at Harvard Chan, and the FXB Center.
From 2008-2017, Dr. Balsari helped established the global health concentration at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he founded domestic and international courses in global health. He directed the Global Emergency Medicine Division at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
Dr. Balsari received his medical degree from Grant Medical College in Mumbai, India and his public health degree from Harvard; he completed his emergency medicine residency at Columbia and Cornell’s NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. In March 2017, he was awarded the Dr B.C. Roy National Award by the President of India, for “outstanding services in the field of sociomedical relief.” Dr. Balsari is an Aspen Ideas Scholar, and Asia 21 Young Leader at the Asia Society.