Harvard Catalyst Profiles

Stanford University	PhD		Epidemiology
University of California San Francisco	MD		Medicine
University of California Berkeley	MPH, MS		Health & Medical Sciences
Harvard University	AB		Chemistry

Dr. Rita Hamad is a social epidemiologist and the Director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research (SPHERE) Center at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the pathways linking social factors like poverty and education with racial and socioeconomic disparities in health across the life course. In particular, she studies the health effects of social and economic policies using interdisciplinary quasi-experimental methods to generate actionable evidence to inform policymaking. She is the co-Chair of the Communications Committee of the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. She also serves as an Advisory Editor for the journal Social Science & Medicine and and Associate Editor at Health Affairs Scholar. In 2020-2022, she was the James C. Puffer American Board of Family Medicine / National Academy of Medicine Fellow. She provides consultation to state and federal legislators on the design of poverty alleviation and social safety net policies. Dr. Hamad mentors trainees at all levels in population health and health equity research, and lectures about the effects of social policies on health inequities. She saw patients as a family physician for 10 years in safety net clinics throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, although she is no longer a practicing doctor.