Sara Naomi Bleich
Primary Faculty

Sara Naomi Bleich

Professor of Public Health Policy

Health Policy and Management

sara_bleich@harvard.edu

Other Positions

Vice Provost for Special Projects

Provost Staff

OPR

Affiliate of the Harvard Kennedy School

Faculty Members

Harvard Kennedy School


Overview

Dr. Sara Bleich is the inaugural Vice Provost for Special Projects at Harvard University, director of the social sciences program and Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. With more than 180 peer-reviewed publications, she is a policy expert and researcher who specializes in diet-related diseases, food insecurity, and racial inequality. Prior to this, Dr. Bleich served in the Biden Administration as the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service and as the Senior Advisor for COVID-19 in the Office of the Secretary at USDA. As a White House Fellow during the Obama Administration, she worked at USDA as a Senior Policy Adviser for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services and on First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative. Dr. Bleich was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023 and holds a B.A. in psychology from Columbia University and a PhD in health policy from Harvard University.


Bibliography


News

Boosting the nursing ranks

Trissa Lyman, MPH ’23, has found nursing extremely rewarding. She’s passionate about bringing more people into the field.

Addressing Harvard’s legacy of slavery

Addressing Harvard University’s legacy of slavery will require genuinely listening to the concerns of descendants of people who were enslaved, making them full partners in decision-making about ways to address the harms done, and avoiding making assumptions about…

Dispelling nutrition myths

Ten experts recently told the New York Times which false ideas about nutrition they would like to dispel. One of those experts—Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Sara Bleich—said that she’d like to dispel the myth that…

Faculty News

Faculty awards and honors, appointments and promotions.