Marcella Alsan, MPH ’05, PHD ’12, won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship—known as a “genius grant”—for her work examining health inequities and solutions for reducing them.
Alsan is a professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Her work draws from public health policy, medicine, and economics, and its focus has ranged from the historical injustice of the Tuskegee syphilis research on Black men in Alabama to the effects of information gaps around COVID-19.
“I’ve been trying for decades to address these gradients in health outcomes, first as a frontline doctor and then as an economist,” Alsan said in a September 28, 2021, Harvard Kennedy School article. “I’m shocked and incredibly grateful to have my non-traditional path honored in such a tremendous way and am excited about the opportunities the grant affords.”
Read Harvard Crimson coverage: Harvard Kennedy School Professor Marcella Alsan Wins MacArthur Grant