Kennedy School professor named to 2025 STATUS List

Marcella Alsan, the Angelopoulos Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, has been named to the 2025 STATUS List, which recognizes the world’s most influential people in the health sciences and life sciences fields. Honoring 50 people across biotech, medicine, healthcare, policy, and health tech each year, the STATUS List is determined by a panel of reporters and editors at the award-winning news outlet STAT (produced by Boston Globe Media).

“STAT News is a trusted and timely source of information on policy and technology for those in the medical community today — to be named by this outlet as an influential scholar in the field is a tremendous honor,” Alsan said.

Alsan’s innovative work has spanned the fields of economics, medicine, and public health policy, with a particular focus on health inequalities. An applied microeconomist, Alsan has studied health inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on Black men in rural Alabama, and more. Alsan previously won the MacArthur Fellowship and the Humboldt Research Award. In 2022, she was elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Alsan earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College, a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, a medical degree from Loyola University Chicago, and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. She served as an associate professor of medicine, economics, and health research and policy at Stanford before joining the Harvard faculty in 2019.

Alsan is affiliated with the Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy — where she leads the Health Inequality Lab — the Center for International Development, and the Women and Public Policy Program. She is also affiliated with the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and the Chan School’s Department of Health Policy and Management.