Eugene Richardson, MD, PhD 

Harvard Medical School
CV

Eugene Richardson, MD, PhD is a physician-anthropologist based at Harvard Medical School. He previously served as the clinical lead for Partners In Health’s Ebola response in Kono District, Sierra Leone, where he continues to conduct research on the social epidemiology of Ebola virus disease and COVID-19. He also worked as a clinical case management consultant for the WHO’s Ebola riposte in Beni, Democratic Republic of the Congo. More recently, he was seconded to the Africa CDC to join their COVID-19 response. His main focus is on biosocial approaches to epidemic disease containment as well as the health effects of climate change. As part of these efforts, he is co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice and co-chair of the Global Environmental Change Commission on Climate Justice.

Dr. Richardson is a proponent of critically applied public anthropology. In his recent book, Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press), he deploys a range of rhetorical tools and draws on his clinical and anthropological work to demonstrate how public health practices–from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference–play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities.

Dr. Richardson is also the lead author on a new chapter on the “Health Effects of Climate Change” in Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine. If elected, he would help promote the use of applied anthropology to help achieve global health equity and climate justice, with a focus on reparations advocacy as well as finding solutions to the threats faced by those least responsible for, and most threatened by, unfolding ecological disasters