Prof. Rifat Atun, M.D.

Dr. Atun is Professor of Global Health Systems and Director of the Health System Innovation Lab at Harvard University. In 2015-2023 he served as the Faculty Chair for the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program. In 2008-12 he was a member of the Executive Management Team of the Global Fund as the Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation. In 2006-13 he was a Professor of International Health Management and Head of the Health Management Group at Imperial College London. He is a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for International development at the Harvard Kennedy School.

His research focuses on health system performance, design and innovation. He has published >450 articles in leading journals with >110 articles in the Lancet/Lancet family of journals. In 202-21-22-23 and 2024 he was recognized by Clarivate/Web of Science as one of the World’s Highly Cited Researchers across multiple disciplines.

In 2019-20 he was a senior advisor to the G20 Presidency and in 2022-23 co-chaired the Task Force on Global Health Security for the G20 Indonesian Presidency. He has advised >30 governments, the World Bank, WHO and leading life-science companies on health systems. He was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine Committee on Health Systems, and the Advisory Boards of WHO Research Centre for Health Development in Japan, Norwegian Research Council for Global Health Research, and the UK Medical Research Council’s Global Health Group.

Professor Atun studied medicine at University of London as a Commonwealth Scholar, with postgraduate training in family medicine and public health and an MBA at Imperial College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty of Public Health, and the Royal College of General Practitioners in the UK.