Ichiro Kawachi

Ichiro Kawachi, MB.ChB., Ph.D., is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology, and Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health. Kawachi received both his medical degree and Ph.D. (in epidemiology) from the University of Otago, New Zealand. He has taught at the Harvard School of Public Health since 1992.

Kawachi is the co-editor (with Lisa Berkman) of the first textbook on Social Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press in 2000. His other books include Neighborhoods and Health with Lisa Berkman ; Globalization and Health with Sara Wamala; Social Capital and Health with S.V. Subramanian & Daniel Kim; the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice with Charles Guest, Walter Ricciardi & Iain Laing; Global Perspectives on Social Capital and Health with Soshi Takao & S.V. Subramanian; and Behavioral Economics and Public Health with Christina Roberto. His current NIH-funded R01 project is focused on the longitudinal impacts of community social cohesion/social capital on functional recovery after the March 11, 2011 Great Eastern Japan earthquake and tsunami.

In 2013, he launched a massive, open online course (MOOC) through HarvardX called “Health and Society” (PHx 201), in which 32,000 participants registered from throughout the world. Kawachi is the Co-Editor in Chief (with S.V. Subramanian) of the international journal Social Science & Medicine. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences.