Introduction to the General Records Schedule
Do you know how long you need to keep your office records, and what you should do when you no longer need them? In this workshop, we’ll help de-mystify records retention by showing you how to use and understand the Harvard University General Records Schedule (GRS). We’ll give you all the information you need to:
- Identify your records using the GRS
- Determine how long to keep your records
- Decide if records should be destroyed or archived
- Know who to contact if the GRS doesn’t describe your records
Workshops are about 30 minutes long. Attendance is free and open to all members of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health communities.
Organizers
Beyond survival: To what extent does Australian disaster and emergency management policy consider population health?
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring Claire Leppold, Takemi Fellow in International Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and senior research fellow at University of Melbourne, and Kate Brady, senior research fellow at University of New South Wales.
Speaker bios
Claire Leppold is a Takemi Fellow in International Health at Harvard Chan School and a senior research fellow at the Disaster, Climate & Adversity Unit, University of Melbourne. She is also an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2026–2029) and a Westpac Research Fellow (2026–2031). Claire’s research examines how to support communities in recovery from cascading and compounding disasters. This focus began during her time living and working in Fukushima following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. In 2020, Claire moved to Australia to begin work at University of Melbourne, where she has since led studies on recovery from the 2019–20 bushfires and repeat floods, including the commissioned evaluation of the Australian Red Cross Bushfire Recovery Program (2020–2023). She has worked with state government, non-government organizations, and community groups to identify ways of changing from a “single disaster” focus in emergency management to one that addresses combined effects across multiple disasters. She has a particular interest in the social determinants of health in disaster settings.
Kate Brady has had a distinguished career in disaster recovery operations, programming, and research. Kate is the senior research fellow for the University of New South Wales HowWeSurvive initiative, an Honorary Academic Specialist at University of Melbourne, and technical advisor to Australian Red Cross Emergency Services, where she established and led the disaster recovery program for 12 years. Most of Kate’s work focuses on what people find helpful and unhelpful after disasters. Throughout her career, she has had significant influence on state and national emergency management policy and has an international profile in collective trauma, resilience, and disaster recovery programming and policy. Kate is co-author of the Australian Disaster Recovery framework and was an advisor in the development of the National Disaster Mental Health Framework. In 2021, she became the host for ABC’s podcast “After the Disaster” and gave a TEDx talk in 2025.
Speaker Information
Kate Brady
Organizers
Collective organisation as crisis infrastructure: Evidence from the Self-Employed Women’s Association during COVID-19 in India
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring Satchit Balsari, associate professor of emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Kartikeya Bhatotia, Climate Fellow at the Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University.
Seminar description
When public health crises hit, governments, individuals, and markets each have a role in smoothing out the resulting shocks. In poorer contexts, each one’s capacity to do so is limited—public safety nets are thin, individual savings are shallow or absent, and financial markets are not far-reaching enough to provide protection to the most vulnerable. How, then, could we imagine institutions that fill this gap? The SEWA-Harvard Study asks whether long-standing community organisations can serve as a kind of crisis infrastructure. The findings suggest that collective organisation and relational trust among informal workers should be treated as genuine social protection infrastructure—a durable complement to state and market capacity, with relevance well beyond India wherever large informal workforces sit outside formal systems.
Speaker bios
Satchit Balsari’s research and teaching are focused on complex humanitarian emergencies and digital health implementation science in resource-poor settings. He has worked with populations affected by war and disasters across the world, and in the most vulnerable communities, his team has leveraged cutting-edge digital tools and citizen science to advance public health planning, advocacy, and response. Satchit co-directs CrisisReady.io, a research-response platform that builds data-driven decision tools for local communities and response agencies affected by disasters globally. He is founding director of the tri-institute Climate and Human Health fellowship at Harvard, leads the climate platform at the Mittal South Asia Institute, and is co-investigator on the Salata Institute’s inaugural interfaculty cluster grant on Climate Adaptation in South Asia. He directs the Harvard India Digital Health Network at the Mittal South Asia Institute and is the curator of Hum Sab Ek, an immersive multimedia traveling exhibition currently on tour. The exhibition is based on his research into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2.9 million members of the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and their response to the crisis.
Kartikeya Bhatotia is a Climate Fellow at the Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University, where he works on research and programming for the Climate Platform. His work brings environmental, health, and social science research into conversation with public policy. He is particularly interested in how informal social systems shape community responses to slow-onset environmental hazards and how collective institutions support health and livelihoods in the Global South. At Harvard, he has contributed to the Salata Institute’s Climate Adaptation in South Asia research cluster and the Harvard Global Health Institute’s Heat and Worker Protections Scholarly Working Group. Before Harvard, Kartikeya worked at Tata Trusts and the Institute for Financial Management and Research, applying behavioral economics to health, climate, and economic development in informal contexts. He was a 2018 Young India Fellow at Ashoka University and earned a master’s degree in public policy form Harvard Kennedy School in 2024.
Speaker Information
Kartikeya Bhatotia
Organizers
What makes care possible? Protection, trust, and solidarity in global health
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring Christos Christou, former international president of MSF and visiting scholar at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
Seminar description
Drawing on experiences from humanitarian crises, conflict settings, and epidemic response, this talk explores three conditions that make care possible: the protection of patients and health workers, trust in science and the institutions that deliver care, and solidarity in responding to needs that transcend borders. Through selected cases, Christos Christou will reflect on what happens when these conditions erode and why defending them is essential to defending humanity itself.
Speaker bio
Christos Christou, MSc, PhD, is a surgeon and humanitarian leader who served as international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) from 2019 to 2025. He joined MSF early in his medical career and has worked in humanitarian settings affected by conflict, displacement, epidemics, and limited access to health care. As international president, he led MSF through the COVID-19 pandemic and major humanitarian crises, while advocating for the protection of civilians and health workers, equitable access to health care, and respect for international humanitarian law.
Christos trained in general and trauma surgery in Greece and the United Kingdom and has worked as a consultant in emergency and colorectal surgery in the NHS. He is currently a visiting scientist at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His academic and teaching interests include humanitarian leadership, trust within communities, health in conflicts, and the protection of medical care. He also contributes to advisory initiatives in global and humanitarian health.
Christos holds a PhD in surgery, an MSc in international health and health crisis management, and the European Board of Surgery Qualification in Coloproctology. In 2025, he was named to the TIME100 list of the world’s most influential leaders shaping the future of philanthropy.
Speaker Information
Christos Christou
Organizers
Trust & Well-being with Dr. David Bersoff
On Wednesday, November 4th from 1-1:50 PM in FXB G12 and online, please join us for the second installment in our Trust and Well-being Seminar Series, featuring Dr. David Bersoff.
All are welcome. Lunch provided.
Series Theme
This seminar series will explore the role of trust in promoting psychological, physical, and social well-being. At a time of declining trust in institutions, political polarization, fear-based public discourse, and rapidly changing technologies that shape how people encounter information and one another, the series will consider trust not only as an individual experience but also as a central feature of collective well-being. Through conversations with leading scholars and practitioners, we will examine how trust is defined and measured across diverse social and cultural contexts; how it functions across relationships, communities, institutions, and generations; and how it is built, maintained, broken, and repaired.
The series will also explore how social, political, commercial, and cultural factors shape trust, with particular attention to health equity and the histories of exclusion, discrimination, disinvestment, and institutional harm that influence whether communities feel able to trust systems. Together, we will consider how trust and trustworthiness can promote safety, belonging, resilience, civic participation, health-promoting behaviors, and flourishing while helping to build more connected, equitable, and resilient communities and systems.
Speaker Biography
Dr. David Bersoff is the Head of Research for the Edelman Trust Institute, Edelman’s think tank dedicated to advancing the study of trust in society. As the Institute’s Chief Trust Scientist, Dr. Bersoff is responsible for ensuring the quality, integrity, and scientific value of all of Edelman’s trust-oriented research, which includes the annual Trust Barometer, the biggest and longest running global study of institutional trust, as well as yearly topical studies examining issues such as climate change, trust in the healthcare system, trust in the workplace, trust in brands, and racial justice. He also oversees all of the Trust Institute’s external research projects done in partnership with other academic, social policy, and philanthropic institutions.
Prior to joining Edelman in 2016, Dr. Bersoff spent 17 years as a consumer insights and marketing strategy consultant at The Futures Company (nee Yankelovich). In his last 5 years with the organization, he served as its Chief Insights Officer and was a member of its global board of directors. In that role, he ran the Global Insights Group and drove the research, data analysis, IP creation and product development strategy for all of their syndicated consumer insights offers. In addition to his background in IP development and insights product management, Dr. Bersoff has also served as a trusted advisor and marketing/brand strategy consultant to major clients in industries as diverse as financial services, automotive, media, professional organizations, energy, and the military.
Before entering the consulting world, Dr. Bersoff spent 12 years engaged in social science research at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, where he was an assistant professor of social psychology and research methodology and served on its IRB.
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Physical Activity and Major Chronic Diseases: Insights from Repeated Measures
Join us on Wednesday, October 7th for the Department of Epidemiology seminar series featuring Dr. Edward Giovannucci.
Abstract: Physical activity is established as a beneficial factor for several major chronic diseases and mortality. Much of the evidence is based on epidemiological studies that have a single baseline measure. The Harvard cohorts have repeated measures, up to every two years, over four decades of follow-up. This unique resource has enabled a deep look at various topics, including the potential for reverse causation, refinement of dose-response relationships, the influence of maintaining an active lifestyle over decades, and the relative influence of moderate versus vigorous activity. Recent insights into these topics will be summarized.
Bio: Dr. Ed Giovannucci is a Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, as well as an American Cancer Society Clinical Researcher Professor. Dr. Giovannucci graduated from Harvard University in 1980, received an MD from University of Pittsburgh in 1984, and received training in anatomic pathology before attaining a doctorate in epidemiology at HSPH in 1992. Over the past four decades, he has conducted studies of diet, physical activity, body weight and metabolic health in relation to cancer and other chronic diseases. The studies were conducted largely in the Harvard cohort studies. He served on 2025 United States Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and continues long-term service on the Expert Panel for the World Cancer Research Fund, the primary global body evaluating evidence for diet and cancer.
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Organizers
Related Events
Implementation Science: The Key to Ensuring that Epidemiologic Research Impacts Health
Join us on Wednesday, November 4th for the Department of Epidemiology seminar series featuring Dr. Karen Emmons.
Abstract: This talk will provide an overview of the field of implementation science, with a particular focus on its potential intersections with epidemiology. A major point will be that it is critical to understand implementation science in order to maximize the likelihood that epidemiologic findings will translate into improved health. Participants should emerge with a better understanding of implementation science and how it can be useful to epidemiologists.
Bio: Karen Emmons is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She has expertise in cancer disparities and in implementation science. Her work focuses on community-engaged approaches to implementation of cancer prevention and early detection interventions in settings that serve low income and disadvantaged communities. She has more than 375 peer-reviewed publications and has served as PI for multiple NIH-funded research projects and centers. She also serves as Faculty Director of the Community Engagement Program for Harvard’s Clinical Translational Science Award, Harvard Catalyst, which focuses on advancing evidence-based strategies to improve community health and creating bi-directional relationships between community partners and researchers. She serves as the MPI of Harvard Chan’s T32 training grant in cancer prevention and control and has received multiple mentoring awards. Her research has also been recognized by honors including the Morse Distinguished Researcher Award, Outstanding Senior Cancer Scientist Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and Outstanding Scientist Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine. She is Past-President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Cancer Advisory Board, and the Community Preventive Services Task Force.
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Measuring health in daily life: Methods and applications of digital phenotyping
Join the Department of Global Health and Population for this Brown Bag Seminar featuring JP Onnela, chair and professor of biostatistics, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Seminar description
Smartphones and other personal devices offer new opportunities to measure human behavior and health in real-world settings and over extended periods. In this talk, JP will provide an overview of his group’s work in digital phenotyping, spanning research infrastructure, statistical methodology, and clinical applications. He will introduce the Beiwe platform for collecting active and passive smartphone data, discuss methodological challenges such as missingness and reproducibility, and describe approaches for addressing such challenges, including the imputation of missing GPS trajectories. He will then illustrate how digital phenotyping can complement conventional clinical assessments through examples from cancer recovery, bipolar disorder, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Speaker bio
Jukka-Pekka “JP” Onnela is a professor of biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also co-director of the master’s program in health data science, one of three data science programs at Harvard University. After completing his doctorate in Finland, he was a research fellow at the University of Oxford, a Fulbright scholar at Harvard University, and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on developing statistical models and methods in network science and digital phenotyping. His group has developed the Beiwe smartphone platform for high-throughput digital phenotyping.
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Community Engagement Concentration Information Session
Join us to learn more about the new interdisciplinary concentration.
Explore how this concentration will help you:
- Build meaningful, ethical partnerships with communities
- Design research with community partners
- Translate evidence into accessible, action-oriented messages
- Prepare for careers centered on equity, engagement and impact
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Organizers
Trust & Well-being with Dr. Lauren Taylor
On Wednesday, October 14th from 1-1:50 PM in FXB G12 and online, please join us for the second installment in our Trust and Well-being Seminar Series, featuring Dr. Lauren Taylor.
All are welcome. Lunch provided.
Series Theme
This seminar series will explore the role of trust in promoting psychological, physical, and social well-being. At a time of declining trust in institutions, political polarization, fear-based public discourse, and rapidly changing technologies that shape how people encounter information and one another, the series will consider trust not only as an individual experience but also as a central feature of collective well-being. Through conversations with leading scholars and practitioners, we will examine how trust is defined and measured across diverse social and cultural contexts; how it functions across relationships, communities, institutions, and generations; and how it is built, maintained, broken, and repaired.
The series will also explore how social, political, commercial, and cultural factors shape trust, with particular attention to health equity and the histories of exclusion, discrimination, disinvestment, and institutional harm that influence whether communities feel able to trust systems. Together, we will consider how trust and trustworthiness can promote safety, belonging, resilience, civic participation, health-promoting behaviors, and flourishing while helping to build more connected, equitable, and resilient communities and systems.
Speaker Biography
Dr. Lauren Taylor is Assistant Professor in the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she is jointly appointed in the Division of Healthcare Delivery Sciences and the Division of Medical Ethics. This joint appointment reflects her interest both in empirical work describing the world as it is and normative scholarship about how the world ought to be. She primarily studies US health care through an organizational lens, applying theoretical frameworks from business ethics and political philosophy to managerial and policy dilemmas. Some of Dr. Taylor’s recent publications have explored hospitals’ scope of legitimate responsibilities, the role of trust in health care delivery, and the community-based organizations’ responses to Medicaid’s emphasis on social determinants.
