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The Department of Global Health and Population is proud to be the first department of population sciences in any school of public health with a focus on global health from the very beginning. Over the past half-century, faculty members, students, and researchers in our department have helped shape the field and have launched some of the most signification ideas in global public health and population sciences. Our alumni are part of a strong network of public health experts who work to devise, implement, and evaluate effective strategies that improve the lives of millions of people around the globe. We have welcomed students and fellows from most countries in the world, and our trainees have gone on to do great things as ministers of health, leaders in national and international public health organizations, and scholars in academic institutions.

Gifts made to the department will be used to aid GHP student organizations, scholarships, and internships; to support faculty initiatives and foster new research collaborations, joint grant writing, and interdisciplinary publications; and to support administration, operations, and special events.

On October 22, 2024, Richard Cash passed away after decades of service in the Department of Global Health and Population. Richard’s passing was an incalculable loss for the department, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the public health community around the world. We are pleased to announce that the Harvard Chan School has established a fund to honor Richard’s lifelong commitment to improving the lives of people around the world. The Richard Cash Memorial Fund will be directed to the Department of Global Health and Population to honor Richard through a named endeavor.

As a young researcher in the 1960s, Richard joined the Cholera Research Laboratory in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), where he helped to develop oral rehydration therapy (ORT), a simple rehydration solution that was easily accessible and could be used by mothers at home to prevent diarrhea and death from cholera. This groundbreaking development was later described in The Lancetas “potentially the most significant medical advance of the century” and earned Richard the 2006 Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health. In the decades since ORT’s development, the therapy has been credited with saving tens of millions of lives, many of them children’s.

Richard joined the Harvard School of Public Health in 1977, where he remained as a senior lecturer in global health and population until his passing. Over the course of almost five decades at the School, Richard influenced hundreds of students, colleagues, and friends, always remaining humble and emphasizing the importance of simple solutions. He believed deeply in the importance of working within communities to find accessible solutions, telling the Harvard Magazine in 2024, “a solution that can’t be applied is really no solution at all.”

Richard was a pillar of the Department of Global Health and Population community and an exemplar of the School’s values and mission. To ensure that his legacy and vision for public health are remembered, please contribute to the Richard Cash Memorial Fund.

To honor Aaka Pande’s deep commitment to research and service in global public health, this fund will be used to provide financial support for summer research internships to students in the two-year master of science degree program in GHP. The focus will be on internships reflecting Aaka’s legacy, including research on the health of underprivileged women and children, the delivery of health services in conflict zones and to refugees, and the development of health care systems for low-income settings and/or in low-income countries. The financial support awarded to students will be known as the Aaka Pande Memorial Awards.

The support will help create opportunities for these students to travel to field sites and gain hands-on research experience. These learning experiences help nurture the deepening of students’ interests, broaden and strengthen their understanding of the myriad challenges of development, and mold future global health researchers, carrying forward Aaka’s legacy.

Contribute to the Aaka Pande Memorial Fund via credit card, or learn about other ways to donate. We are grateful for all contributions in memory of Aaka and for the impact this fund will have on students carrying forth her passion and commitment to global public health.

In Memory of Aaka Pande

The Department of Global Health and Population honors the memory of Aaka (Aakanksha) Pande, SM ’05. As a student in the department, Aaka was recognized by both faculty and classmates as passionately committed to pushing boundaries and seeking solutions to improve the lives of the disadvantaged. She completed an internship at the World Bank in 2004, and in 2005, Aaka received the department’s Master’s Thesis Award for her thesis entitled “Do Pills Promote Prevention? The Impact of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy on Sexual Risk Behavior in Jodhpur, India.” This accomplishment furthered her enthusiasm and commitment to improving the welfare of poor and marginalized populations. The GHP community is proud to have been an integral part of Aaka’s journey that led her to a distinguished career in global health.

Aaka joined the World Bank in 2005 as a junior professional associate working on health systems in South Asia, an experience that motivated her to return to Harvard to further sharpen her analytical skills for application to development. She graduated from the PhD in health policy program in 2011 and returned to the World Bank as a young professional, rising to become a senior economist (health) in 2015. She held this position until her death in July 2018. Her work at the World Bank included strengthening country health systems, addressing humanitarian crises, and creating novel tools to assess the health impact of conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. She worked to strengthen the capacity of female health works in rural Pakistan, combat the transmission of infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, and spearheaded a signature World Bank initiative to provide quality and affordable health care to Syrian refugees in Jordan. She made invaluable contributions to the Flagship Course on Health System Strengthening and was a guest editor of a special issue in the journal Health Systems & Reform on the Middle East and North Africa.

Aaka cared deeply about educating the future leaders of global health and development. She was generous with her time, mentoring young minds and encouraging them to pursue their passions in research, while always available to guide them through the obstacles that they faced along the way. As a researcher herself, she strongly encouraged the pursuit of science and learning new skills to help generate knowledge to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged.

The Uwe Brinkmann Memorial Travel Fellowship is awarded each year to an outstanding doctoral student conducting field research in international health epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A renowned investigator of tropical diseases and a dedicated teacher who inspired doctoral students, Professor Brinkmann held appointments in three departments and was a founding member of the multidisciplinary New Diseases Working Group. He died in June 1993 while conducting field research in Brazil.

The Fellowship will provide an award to support travel to a field research site and will be awarded to a doctoral student whose work exemplifies the interests and values of Professor Brinkmann, seeking to bring together international health epidemiology and infectious diseases.