Gene Bukhman

I am a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who is focused on developing a science of integration for delivery of interventions to address non-communicable diseases (NCDs) among populations living in extreme poverty (NCDI Poverty). I completed my MD and PhD in medical anthropology in 2001, and completed my clinical training in 2007. I spent the next 5 years working closely with colleagues in Rwanda to develop an integrated approach for decentralizing care for rheumatic heart disease, cardiomyopathies and other severe chronic NCDs such as type 1 diabetes and sickle cell disease. This approach has since been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the Package of Essential NCD Interventions - Plus (PEN-Plus). Between 2010 and 2015, I was the Senior Technical Advisor on NCDs to the Rwanda Ministry of Health, and contributed to strategic planning to address NCDs among the rural poor. Between 2016 and 2020, I co-chaired the Lancet Commission on Reframing NCDs and Injuries for the Poorest Billion, and was the lead author of the Commission’s report. I currently co-chair the 29-country NCDI Poverty Network launched in December of the 2020 to support the implementation of the Commission’s recommendations, including initiation and scale-up up of PEN-Plus programs. I am the author of more than 130 articles and book chapters that apply a range of methodologies from ethnography and archival research to epidemiology and mathematical modelling to identify solutions to the problem of “NCDI Poverty.” I am the founding Director of the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and I am the founding director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Integration Science and Service Delivery. In 2022, I received the World Heart Federation award for Outstanding Contribution to Global Cardiovascular Health.

Affiliation on publications · Brigham and Women's Hospital