Published: 09:09 AM, 21 August 2026
Bangladeshi Public Health Leader Qudsia Huda Receives Harvard’s 2026 Alumni Award
Shahidul Alam Swapan
Bangladeshi, humanitarian and global health leader Dr Qudsia Huda has been named the recipient of the 2026 Leadership Award in Public Health Practice by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Dr Huda, who earned her Master of Public Health degree from Harvard in 2002, is the first Bangladeshi to receive the prestigious award. The recognition marks a significant achievement not only in her distinguished career but also for Bangladesh’s growing contribution to global public health leadership.
Harvard Chan School announced its 2026 Alumni Award recipients on August 3. The awards will be celebrated during the School’s Alumni Weekend, scheduled for September 25–26, 2026. The annual event brings together graduates, academics and public health professionals to recognize alumni whose work has produced a lasting impact on communities and health systems worldwide.
Dr Huda currently leads the World Health Organization’s work on disaster risk management, resilience and climate-related health risks at WHO headquarters in Geneva. In this role, she contributes to shaping international policies and strategies for preparing for, responding to and recovering from health emergencies.
Her selection for the Leadership Award recognizes a career spanning more than 25 years across clinical medicine, humanitarian action, emergency preparedness, global health security, disaster-risk reduction and climate resilience.
The Harvard Chan Alumni Association describes the Leadership Award in Public Health Practice as an honour for a graduate who has demonstrated outstanding and effective leadership in public health practice, whether in the public or private sphere.
The award particularly recognizes selfless service, substantial career contributions to the adoption of public health principles, and leadership within government, non-governmental organizations or other public-service institutions. The impact of a recipient’s work may be demonstrated at the local, national, regional or international level.
Harvard’s recognition of Dr Huda reflects both the geographical reach and practical consequences of her career. Her work has taken her from Bangladesh to some of the most challenging humanitarian settings in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and ultimately to the highest levels of global health policymaking in Geneva.
Born and educated in Bangladesh, Dr Huda began her professional life as a physician. Her early medical experience, however, led her to recognize that treating individual patients was only one part of protecting human health. Prevention, preparedness and the strengthening of health systems could save lives on a much broader scale.
This understanding encouraged her transition from clinical medicine to public health.
She later travelled to the United States and completed her MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2002. While at Harvard, she was among the pioneering members of the first cohort of the School’s Humanitarian Studies Program.
That experience helped connect medical knowledge with the wider humanitarian challenges created by disasters, conflicts, displacement, disease outbreaks and institutional fragility. It also prepared her for a career in which public health decisions frequently had to be made under intense pressure and amid considerable uncertainty.
Her journey from a Bangladeshi medical background to a leadership position at WHO headquarters illustrates how expertise developed in countries exposed to disasters and resource constraints can help influence policy at the global level.
Dr Huda joined the World Health Organization in 2004. During more than two decades with the UN health agency, she has played leading roles in responses to some of the most serious humanitarian and public health emergencies of the modern era.
These have included the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Ebola outbreaks, the COVID-19 pandemic and numerous armed conflicts and natural disasters across Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Each of these emergencies posed a different set of challenges. The Indian Ocean tsunami devastated coastal communities across several countries and demonstrated the urgent need for stronger coordination between health authorities, humanitarian organizations and disaster-management agencies. Ebola required highly specialized outbreak control, community engagement and the protection of health workers. COVID-19 demanded an unprecedented global response involving surveillance, research, risk communication, health-system preparedness and international cooperation.
Dr Huda’s work across such varied crises reflects the evolution of emergency public health itself. Modern disaster management no longer begins only after a catastrophic event. It requires countries to identify vulnerabilities, assess risks, strengthen essential services, protect healthcare facilities and train institutions before an emergency occurs.
At WHO headquarters, her responsibilities encompass disaster risk management, resilience and the health consequences of climate-related hazards. She helps advance policies intended to ensure that health systems are not merely capable of responding to emergencies but are also resilient enough to continue providing essential services during crises.
Dr Huda’s recognition comes at a time when climate change is making the relationship between disasters and public health increasingly urgent.
Extreme heat, floods, cyclones, wildfires, droughts and other climate-related hazards are placing growing pressure on health systems. Such events can cause immediate injuries and deaths, but their consequences often extend much further. They can contaminate water supplies, interrupt medical services, damage hospitals, increase food insecurity, displace communities and create conditions in which infectious diseases spread more easily.
Vulnerable populations—including children, older people, persons with disabilities, low-income communities and displaced people—frequently bear the heaviest burden.
For Bangladesh, this dimension of Dr Huda’s work holds particular relevance. The country has made notable progress in cyclone preparedness, early-warning systems and community-based disaster management, but it remains highly exposed to flooding, river erosion, extreme heat, sea-level rise and other climate-related risks.
Her work at WHO therefore connects directly with challenges experienced by millions of people in Bangladesh and across the climate-vulnerable Global South.
Her leadership supports an approach in which health is integrated into national and international disaster-risk policies. This requires collaboration across government ministries, healthcare institutions, humanitarian agencies, researchers, civil society organizations and local communities.
Beyond her technical responsibilities, Dr Huda is recognized as a global health diplomat. Her work requires building agreement among countries and institutions that may have very different political systems, resources and public health priorities.
She serves in several international leadership capacities, including as co-chair of the International Recovery Platform. She is also WHO’s focal point for disaster-risk reduction in relation to the G20 and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Adopted by United Nations member states in 2015, the Sendai Framework provides an international roadmap for reducing disaster losses and strengthening resilience. It emphasizes understanding risk, improving governance, investing in prevention and preparedness, and enhancing recovery.
Representing health priorities within such international processes helps ensure that hospitals, public health services, healthcare workers and vulnerable communities remain central to disaster planning.
Dr Huda has also contributed extensively as an author and technical expert. Her publications, policy frameworks and technical guidance have influenced emergency preparedness and health emergency and disaster-risk management internationally.
WHO materials identify her as a contributor to research and technical work addressing health emergency and disaster-risk management, including the challenges created by COVID-19 and concurrent emergencies.
Shahidul Alam Swapan is a financial sector
specialist and an author based in Switzerland.
