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. 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 Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr. Basu has received numerous awards in medical education, including the inaugural Equity, Social Justice and Advocacy faculty award and the Charles McCabe Faculty Prize in Excellence at Harvard Medical School. He has been a Curtis Prout Academy Fellow at Harvard Medical School and a Harvard Macy Scholar. He has co-directed the social medicine course at Harvard Medical School and served on it’s Task Force to Address Racism. His academic work has been published in Academic Medicine, PLOS Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine, among others.
Dr. Basu has been recognized nationally for his work in climate change and health equity. He was named to the 2021 Grist 50 list of climate leaders. He also received the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2020 Science Defender Award. He has served on the city of Cambridge Mayor’s Climate Crisis Working Group and its Net-Zero Climate Task Force. His perspective pieces have appeared in the Boston Globe, Scientific American, the BMJ, Grist, NPR/WBUR, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. His work has been featured by NPR’s All Things Considered.
Dr. Basu was a Sommer Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he studied human rights. From 2018-2021, he was a part of the Robert Wood Johnson Culture of Health Leaders program. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Basu has served as one of the clinical leads of Cambridge Health Alliance’s COVID Community Management clinical services. Dr. Basu is trained in community organizing and has served as a coach for workshops run by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Marshall Ganz. He has previously worked for numerous global NGOs including the Gates Institute, Partners in Health, the Child in Need Institute and Last Mile Health.
He received his bachelor of arts at Brown University, with a concentration in international relations. He received his medical degree from the Larner College of Medicine at UVM, and his master’s in public health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He completed his residency training at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School.
We need to get fossil gas out of homes, for the climate and our health
Our Health Equity Fellow Dr. Gaurab Basu explains what drove him to electrify his home.
Sunny highs to shivering cold: Wild weather swings take a health toll
Check out what Drs. Aaron Bernstein and Gaurab Basu have to say about the health impacts of wild weather.
Amid devastating climate report and heat waves coming our way, we need courage
Dr. Gaurab Basu offers guidance on how to courageously fight climate change as an individual.
The climate crisis is making us sick. Doctors need better training to treat it.
Climate-informed clinicians can keep their patients healthier in a changing climate.
No Time to Waste
Scientists from across departments and research centers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are working collectively to meet the challenge of climate change.
Biden aims to create climate, equity office at HHS
Our Health Equity Fellow Dr. Gaurab Basu says the Biden administration learned lessons about equity from COVID-19 and plans to apply them "to the greatest public health threat we face — climate change."
Q&A: Gaurab Basu on climate change, racial justice, and COVID-19
Our Health Equity Fellow Dr. Gaurab Basu discusses how a legacy of racist policies in the U.S. have left communities of color ill-prepared for climate change and why applying a racial justice framework to climate action is instrumental to overcoming these challenges and closing the equity gap.
Gaurab Basu named a ‘Fixer’ of human and planetary health
Our Health Equity Fellow Dr. Gaurab Basu has been named one of 2021’s Grist 50—emerging leaders who are developing fresh, real-world solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems.
For this doc, better health begins with a better planet
"Better health begins with a better planet" and our Healthy Equity Fellow Dr. Gaurab Basu is leading the way.
Grist 50 Meet the Fixers
Our Health Equity Fellow Gaurab Basu is featured as one of Grist's 50 Fixers who are building a more just and equitable future.
