Harvard Global Health Institute awards four Burke Global Health Fellowships

Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI) has announced four Burke Global Health Fellowships for 2017. The Fellowships, made possible by Harvard alumna Katherine States Burke ’79, and her husband T. Robert Burke, support Harvard junior faculty members engaged in global health research and training in the early stages of their careers.

The 2017 Burke Global Health Fellows are:

Jose F. Figueroa, MD, MPH
Research Associate, Health Policy and Management Department, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Faculty Director, Residency Management & Leadership Track, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Lindsay Jaacks, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Visiting Professor, Public Health Foundation of India

Gautam Rao, PhD, MS
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences; Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research; Faculty Affiliate, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

Gustavo E. Velásquez, MD, MPH
Instructor in Medicine and Research Associate, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Associate Physician, Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

“The Burke Global Health Fellowship is a catalyst that supports and often transforms careers of our most promising junior faculty. It has already sparked and supported work that is innovative and has changed the way healthcare is delivered to some of the world’s move vulnerable people. We are so deeply grateful to the Burkes for their vision and generosity in seeing the value of this program,” said HGHI Faculty Director, Ashish Jha.

To date, the Burke Fellowship has supported more than 20 Harvard junior faculty at critical stages of their careers. Applicants across disciplines apply for one-year research or undergraduate curriculum development awards, worth up to $75,000 or $25,000 respectively. Proposals are reviewed by a committee of established Harvard global health faculty. Previous recipients have been promoted to tenured faculty and have received key research independence and career development awards from the NIH. Burke fellows have investigated numerous disciplines and areas in global health, including bench research on human malarial disease, behavioral economics of maternal and neonatal health, and course development in conflict resolution and many others.

The Harvard Global Health Institute is committed to surfacing and addressing broad challenges in health that affect populations around the globe.  HGHI does that by harnessing the unique breadth of excellence within fields at Harvard and by being a dedicated partner and convener to organizations, governments, scholars, and committed citizens around the globe.