Research Initiatives, Centers, Programs, and Affiliations

The François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University envisions a world that fulfills the health and human rights of all peoples and protects them from injustices imposed by discrimination, poverty, conflict, and disaster. This interdisciplinary center conducts rigorous investigation of the most serious threats to health and wellbeing globally. The FXB Center works closely with scholars, students, the international policy community, and civil society to engage in ongoing strategic efforts to promote equity and dignity for those oppressed by grave poverty and stigma around the world. Click here to visit the FXB Center website.

The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies is a university-wide initiative. Its mission is to improve well-being around the world by better understanding the interaction of demographic changes with social and economic development. Through its research, dissemination, and public engagement, this center strives to produce population-based evidence that will enable societies to be more responsive to demographic transitions in terms of policies and culture change. Click here to visit the PoP Center website.

The Harvard China Health Partnership provides a platform for faculty across Harvard University to advance scholarship on China. Rich research partnerships with leading universities and government agencies for health in China provide a robust platform for multi-disciplinary and multi-site research. Executive Education programs with key government agencies for health in China bring together leading academics from Harvard and peer institutions in China to help Chinese policy makers address targeted challenges in the financing and delivery of health care in China. The Partnership’s Visiting Scholars program hosts rising scholars as well as established academic researchers from peer institutions in China as part of a commitment to advance cooperation and grow academic talent in China. Lastly, a monthly seminar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health provides an opportunity for invited faculty, researchers, and policy makers from China or Harvard to present current work on health and China. Click here to visit the Harvard China Health Partnership website.

The Harvard Global Health Institute is committed to surfacing and addressing broad challenges in public health that affect large populations around the globe. As a multi-disciplinary institute, HGHI strives to create and pursue opportunities that convene and connect stakeholders across disciplines, geographies, sectors, and the globe. It is dedicated to enhancing the University’s capacity to conduct and disseminate interdisciplinary research that addresses some of the biggest challenges facing the globe. HGHI also focuses on connecting students, faculty, and thought leaders across the University and its affiliated hospitals.  To help deliver its mission, the Global Health Institute seeks to support and expand creative, collaborative educational efforts that focus on global health and the challenges facing the world’s populations. Click here to visit the Harvard Global Health Institute website. 

The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is a University-wide academic and research center in humanitarian crisis and leadership supported by Harvard University’s Office of the Provost and based at the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The mission of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) is to conduct research and education on the practice of relieving human suffering in war and disaster by advancing the science and practice of humanitarian response worldwide. Click here to visit the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative website.

  The Health Systems Innovation Lab at Harvard University is a global research and training lab that specializes in creating high value health systems through targeted innovations. Led by Prof. Rifat Atun, the Lab uses its research, education, innovation and translation activities to work with students, governments, private sector, multilateral entities, and civil society to promote policy and practice, and accelerate the diffusion of health system innovations. The Lab conducts its work within two inter-related streams–Global Health Systems and Innovation—and is driven by a Harvard-based team of interdisciplinary clinicians and academic leaders, and an international group of disciplinary experts. Click here to visit the Health Systems Innovation Lab website. 

The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health India Research Center, an office of Harvard Global Research Support Centre India, opened in December 2015, through a generous gift from Dr. Swati Piramal, a 1992 graduate of the Harvard Chan School, and Mr. Ajay Piramal, a graduate of Harvard Business School. The Center is designed to facilitate the development of new strategic relationships and build upon existing ones with organizations across India. The Center provides logistical support for its strategic goals of research, teaching, and knowledge translation and communication already underway by the School’s faculty and students and their collaborators in India. Equally important, it offers opportunities to expand those activities and create new projects in the future. Click here to visit the India Research Center website.

The QuEST Center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health serves as the secretariat for QuEST Network activities and research. QuEST Harvard is led by Prof. Margaret E. Kruk, the Director of the QuEST Network. The QuEST Network seeks to build the evidence base to support transformation to high quality health systems by improving measurement, testing solutions, and creating generalizable knowledge in partnership with researchers and changemakers.  Click here to visit the QuEST Network website.

The Future of Health and Economic Resiliency in Africa (FHERA), implemented in collaboration with The Lancet, aims to provide a forum for robust intellectual inquiry, research, and knowledge to inform dialogues, policy, and actions by individuals, communities, and countries to shape the future of health and economic resiliency for Africa. It will galvanize the intellectual resources that the African continent has in academia, policy and practice for impact, and the public and private sectors, as well as across the diaspora. In order to achieve FHERA’s overall goals, strong collaboration and ownership of the effort will be required from African scientists, policymakers, global experts, and institutions. Learn more about FHERA on their website. 

The Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard Global Health Institute, as well as other schools and departments at the University, have developed a network to coordinate activities under the rubric of a new initiative: GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard. The goal of the new initiative is to foster a collaborative and multi-disciplinary community at Harvard dedicated to transforming mental health of the world’s population through education, research, innovation, and engagement. Our overarching objective is to vitalize a community of students and faculty within Harvard who are passionate about promoting a broad perspective on mental health as a fundamental public good and a universal human right. Through a combination of teaching, networking of students and faculty, collaborative research, and engagement with other institutions, innovators and communities with shared interests and values in global settings, we seek to build the capacity of future generations of scholars in this field. Click here to visit the Global Mental Health @ Harvard website.

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease are now the leading cause of death and disability in most low- and middle-income countries. To address this global health challenge, researchers from the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have launched the GHP Project on Access to Care for Cardiometabolic Diseases (HPACC).  HPACC is a growing collaboration between the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the University of Göttingen, the Heidelberg Institute of Public Health, the Caribbean Public Health Agency, the George Institute, and researchers from over 20 other countries.  Click here to visit the HPACC website.

The International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) is implementing an intervention program on the post-partum intrauterine contraceptive device (PPIUD) services through its nationally-affiliated Associations of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians in six countries—Sri Lanka, Kenya, India, Tanzania, Nepal and Bangladesh. The Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health is studying the impact and performance of the FIGO PPIUD intervention in three of the six countries, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Tanzania. The study will encompass both the impact of the intervention on the uptake and subsequent continued use of PPIUD, the extent to which the intervention leads to the institutionalization of postpartum IUD services in the hospitals, and to what extent the service diffuses to other hospitals or providers. Click here to visit the PPIUD website.

Important epidemiologic and policy changes that are reshaping national and local health landscapes necessitate a renewed focus on disease prevention and health promotion, and on strategic decision-making to prioritize programs for maximum impact and efficiency. The Prevention Policy Modeling Lab models the health impact, costs and cost-effectiveness of infectious disease treatment and prevention programs in the United States. We work closely with collaborators in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to inform U.S. health policy and guide public health decision-making at national, state and local levels. The models we build incorporate evidence-based prevention strategies, emphasize cross-cutting initiatives and produce results that can be operationalized within healthcare and other sectors. Click here to visit the Prevention Policy Modeling Lab website.

The Value of Vaccination Research Network (VoVRN) is a community of practice dedicated to generating new, high-quality evidence on the broader social and economic impacts of vaccination. The purpose of this research is to support evidence-based decision-making for immunization program investments in healthcare systems around the world. Click here to visit the VOVRN website.

The Lown Scholars Program was established in honor of Dr. Bernard Lown, a world-renowned cardiologist and activist, whose career has advanced public health globally. The Program is designed to create an international cadre of talented health professionals who will use public health tools and strategies to prevent cardiovascular diseases and promote cardiovascular health in developing countries, as defined by the United Nations. Since its establishment in 2008, The Lown Scholars Program has supported the work of more than two dozen Lown Scholars from Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Our support has facilitated productive and long-term collaborations between the Scholars and Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health faculty members. Click here to visit the Lown Scholars website.

The Fogarty Global Health Training Program, a consortium of Harvard, Boston University, Northwestern, and University of New Mexico, offers opportunities in global health research training for pre- and post-doctoral candidates from the U.S. and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs). This program is sponsored by the Fogarty International Center (FIC) and several collaborating Institutes and Centers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The purpose of the program is to generate a new cadre of global health researchers, educators, and professionals who will be prepared to address the new challenges in global health. The program will provide fellows with a one year mentored research fellowship in innovative global health research to promote health equity for populations around the world. Click here to visit the Fogarty Global Health Training Program website.

To equip and empower more leaders in global health, GHP and the Harvard Global Health Institute offer a fellowship specifically designed to promote leadership skills in individuals from low- and middle-income countries who will, in turn, mentor future female leaders in global health. Harvard LEAD Fellows have access to faculty, are provided with senior mentors and the opportunity to build a custom curriculum aligned to their own unique personal growth and leadership plan. Based on their specific interests and leadership goals, LEAD fellows engage in a tailored leadership training program, speaking and networking opportunities, and independent project work. Learn more about the Harvard LEAD Fellowship on their website. 

The International Health Systems Program (IHSP) in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health is a multidisciplinary team of faculty, scholars, and experts working to improve health care systems in developing countries to improve health and living standards for the poor and disadvantaged. IHSP brings together economics, clinical and public health science, politics, ethics and management to increase knowledge of how health systems work; through research; share this knowledge through teaching, training, technical dissemination and publications; and apply this knowledge by providing technical assistance improving the health status of those most in need. Click here to visit the International Health Systems Program website.

The Nutrition and Global Health Program takes an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and conducting research about nutrition, its effect on human and economic development, nutrition in humanitarian crisis situations, and the dynamic interplay between the epidemiologic, nutritional, and demographic transitions around the globe. The Program trains and prepares a new generation of health professionals dedicated to innovative problem solving and evaluation approaches to global health nutrition challenges, with emphasis on concerns pertaining to low and middle-income countries. Click here to visit the Nutrition and Global Health Program website.

The Program on the Global Demography of Aging (PGDA) at Harvard University, led by David E. Bloom, received funding from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health to carry out research on important themes related to global aging and health, with an emphasis on issues in the developing world. A key overarching theme focuses the expertise available at various schools at Harvard toward one of the pressing health questions of global aging, namely understanding the changing patterns of adult morbidity and mortality, including their measurements and causes, demographic and economic implications, and policies and programs for addressing and mitigating such implications. Click here to visit the Program on Global Demography of Aging website.

The Takemi Program in International Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is an interdisciplinary research program that focuses on the problems of mobilizing, allocating, and maintaining limited resources to improve health. To address these issues, the program brings together at Harvard a small group of Takemi Fellows, mid-career professionals from around the world, with particular emphasis on fellows from developing countries. Through its activities, the program aims to advance knowledge about international health and to contribute to institutional development and improvement of national policy. The program was established in 1983 and is named after Dr. Taro Takemi, the distinguished physician-scientist who served for more than 25 years as the President of the Japan Medical Association. Click here to visit the Takemi Program website.