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Christopher Golden
Primary Faculty

Christopher Golden

Associate Professor of Nutrition and Planetary Health

Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Departments

Department of Environmental Health

Department of Global Health and Population

Department of Nutrition

Other Positions

Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Environmental Health

Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Global Health and Population

Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Director of Program on Nutrition and Planetary Health

Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Director of MPH Program in Nutrition

Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Biography

I am an ecologist and epidemiologist interested in the interface of ecosystem service provisioning and human health, specifically in the context of global trends in biodiversity loss and ecosystem transformation. Since 1999, I have been conducting ecological and public health research in Madagascar. Most broadly, I am interested in local people’s dependence on natural resources for obtaining adequate health. This interest has led to various studies into connections between marine and terrestrial wildlife consumption and the incidence of micronutrient deficiencies, the importance of botanical ethnomedicines and geophagy to local health, and the eco-epidemiology of malaria and the human microbiome given current trends in biodiversity loss and land use change. Beyond Madagascar, I have been leading a collaborative research program that evaluates the connections among climate change, fisheries management and ocean governance, and food security and human nutrition in coastal populations around the world. Given trends in mass fisheries declines, coral bleaching, and raising sea surface temperatures that will drive fisheries away from the Equator and toward the Poles, food-insecure populations across the globe will be deprived of a critical nutritional resource. Our group tackles this subject by modeling potential health futures and determining what types of interventions may be able to buffer against these impacts.

Education and Training

  • MPH, Epidemiology
    UC Berkeley
  • PhD, Environmental Science, Policy, and Management
    UC Berkeley
  • BA, Environmental Conservation
    Harvard College
  • Post-doc, Planetary Health
    Harvard University Center for the Environment

Publications

  • Author Correction: Governance and resilience as entry points for transforming food systems in the countdown to 2030.

    Schneider KR, Remans R, Bekele TH, Aytekin D, Conforti P, Dasgupta S, DeClerck F, Dewi D, Fabi C, Gephart JA, Masuda YJ, McLaren R, Saisana M, Aburto N, Ambikapathi R, Arellano Rodriguez M, Barquera S, Battersby J, Beal T, Béné C, Cafiero C, Campeau C, Caron P, Cattaneo A, Candel J, Covic N, Del Pino Alvarez I, Dominguez Barreto AP, Elouafi I, Frazier TJ, Fremier A, Foley P, Golden CD, Gonzalez Fischer C, Guarin A, Hendriks S, Herforth A, Honorati M, Huang J, Getaneh Y, Kennedy G, Laar A, Lal R, Lidder P, Feye GL, Loken B, Malapit H, Marshall Q, Mulatu KA, Munguia A, Nordhagen S, Resnick D, Suhardiman D, Sumaila UR, Sun B, Mengesha BT, Torero Cullen M, Tubiello FN, Dooren CV, Valero Morales I, Vivero-Pol JL, Webb P, Wiebe K, Haddad L, Herrero M, Rosero Moncayo J, Fanzo J. Nat Food 2025 Feb 20
    PMID: 39972188
  • Governance and resilience as entry points for transforming food systems in the countdown to 2030.

    Schneider KR, Remans R, Bekele TH, Aytekin D, Conforti P, Dasgupta S, DeClerck F, Dewi D, Fabi C, Gephart JA, Masuda YJ, McLaren R, Saisana M, Aburto N, Ambikapathi R, Arellano Rodriguez M, Barquera S, Battersby J, Beal T, Béné C, Cafiero C, Campeau C, Caron P, Cattaneo A, Candel J, Covic N, Del Pino Alvarez I, Dominguez Barreto AP, Elouafi I, Frazier TJ, Fremier A, Foley P, Golden CD, Gonzalez Fischer C, Guarin A, Hendriks S, Herforth A, Honorati M, Huang J, Getaneh Y, Kennedy G, Laar A, Lal R, Lidder P, Feye GL, Loken B, Malapit H, Marshall Q, Mulatu KA, Munguia A, Nordhagen S, Resnick D, Suhardiman D, Sumaila UR, Sun B, Mengesha BT, Torero Cullen M, Tubiello FN, Dooren CV, Valero Morales I, Vivero-Pol JL, Webb P, Wiebe K, Haddad L, Herrero M, Rosero Moncayo J, Fanzo J. Nat Food 2025
    PMID: 39810054
  • Equity as a priority in EAT-Lancet-aligned food system transformations.

    Marrero A, Nicoson C, Kelahan H, Mendoza K, Salvia M, Golden C, Mattei J. Nat Food 2024
    PMID: 39354117
  • Sustainable-use marine protected areas to improve human nutrition.

    Viana DF, Gill D, Zvoleff A, Krueck NC, Zamborain-Mason J, Free CM, Shepon A, Grieco D, Schmidhuber J, Mascia MB, Golden CD. Nat Commun 2024 Sep 17
    PMID: 39289342
  • Globalization of wild capture and farmed aquatic foods.

    Gephart JA, Agrawal Bejarano R, Gorospe K, Godwin A, Golden CD, Naylor RL, Nash KL, Pace ML, Troell M. Nat Commun 2024 Sep 13
    PMID: 39271651