Gaurab Basu, MD, MPH is a primary care physician and Director of Education and Policy at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE). He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Global Health & Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His work focuses on the intersection of climate change, global health equity, human rights, medical education, and public policy. He practices internal medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance.
Dr. Basu has developed and evaluated numerous innovative health equity curricular programs. He is the faculty director of the HMS Climate Change, Environment and Health curricular theme, co-founded the CHA Center for Health Equity Education and Advocacy, co-directed the HMS social medicine curriculum, and co-directs the Climate Health Organizing Fellowship. He serves on the Harvard University Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability Standing Committee on Climate Education. Dr. Basu received the inaugural HMS Equity, Social Justice, and Advocacy Faculty Award and the HMS Charles McCabe Faculty Prize in Excellence. He has been a HMS Curtis Prout Academy Fellow and a Harvard Macy Scholar.
In 2021, Dr. Basu was named to the Grist 50 list of national climate leaders. In 2018, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation selected him to their Culture of Health Leadership fellowship. Dr. Basu advises the Massachusetts Governor’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) as a member of the Implementation Advisory Committee and the Climate Science Advisory Panel. He is a part of the city of Cambridge Mayor’s Climate Crisis Working Group and its Net-Zero Climate Task Force. His work has been featured by NPR’s All Things Considered, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, the BMJ, and Grist, among others.
Dr. Basu previously worked for numerous global NGOs including the Gates Institute, Partners in Health, the Child in Need Institute, and Last Mile Health. He is on the advisory council for the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, the Environmental League of Massachusetts, and the Weather Channel’s climate program “Pattrn.” He is an expert advisor to the non profit Rewiring America. He previously was on the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility and served as one of the clinical leads of Cambridge Health Alliance’s COVID Community Management clinical services during the pandemic.
He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, with a bachelor of arts in international relations. He received his medical degree from the Larner College of Medicine at UVM. Dr. Basu was a Sommer Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he studied human rights and received his masters in public health. He completed his internal medicine residency training at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School.
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.
How Your Car Can Make the Air Cleaner
"My patients have been set up to do poorly through no fault of their own because the pollution in their environment is working against them,” says our Health Equity Fellow Dr. Gaurab Basu.
