Howard Hu, M.D., M.P.H., Sc.D.

Board Chair

Howard Hu, M.D., M.P.H., ScD., trained in internal medicine, preventive medicine, and epidemiology. He has served as a tenured Professor, Department Chair, and Dean at Harvard, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto. Since 2020, Dr. Hu has been a tenured Professor (The Flora L. Thornton Department Chair until 2024, when Dr. Ricky Bluthenthal succeeded him) in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Hu has led and collaborated with international teams investigating the determinants of adult chronic disease, impaired child development, and most recently, COVID-19, in population-based studies in the USA, Mexico, India, and China, generating over 400 peer-reviewed publications and winning awards from NIH, the American Public Health Association, the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, and other organizations along the way. Apart from academia, Dr. Hu chaired the Research Commission of the International Physician for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1992-1995), conducted research in India as a Senior Faculty Fulbright Scholar (2000-2001), and served on fact-finding missions for Physicians for Human Rights. Dr. Hu currently co-leads the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) birth cohort study, serves as Senior Science Advisor for the Pure Earth Global Toxics project, and collaborates on the USC Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Applied Sciences (IDEAS) initiative and the Keck USC Sustainability and Healthcare initiative (KUSHI). He also teaches a USC course on Global Environmental Health, directs the USC Dhablania and Kim Family Global Medicine Endowed Fellowship Program, co-chairs the Research Council of the Public Health Foundation of India, and serves on the WEA Board.