Dr. Satchit Balsari is an emergency physician and public health practitioner. Over the past 20 years, his research has sought to advance the health and human rights of populations displaced by disasters and war, across the Middle East, South Asia and the Americas. He is assistant professor at Harvard’s medical and public health schools, and teaches courses across the University on disasters, war, and leveraging entrepreneurship to solve intractable socioeconomic problems.
Dr. Balsari is the co-director of CrisisReady, a research-response platform committed to advancing evidence-based decision making in disasters (crisisready.io). Dr. Balsari’s innovations in digital health implementation science include cloud-based disease surveillance systems deployed at some of the world’s largest gatherings, including the 2013 and 2015 Kumbh Melas in India. He directs the Harvard India Digital Health Network at the Mittal South Asia Institute (idhnet.org). IDHN’s policy outputs have helped shape the technological and policy landscape of digital health in India. He is founding director of the Climate and Human Health Fellowship at Harvard (climateandhumanhealth.org)
He is a graduate of Grant Medical College, Mumbai; and completed his training at Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. Dr. Balsari is an Asia Society Fellow, an Aspen Ideas Scholar, and the youngest recipient of the BC Roy Award awarded by the President of India, the nation’s highest honor in medicine.