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Gulrez Shah Azhar    

Assistant Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation; Doctoral Student, Public Policy, Pardee RAND Graduate School

Gulrez Shah Azhar is an assistant policy analyst at the nonprofit RAND Corporation and a public policy doctoral student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, where his work focuses on heat waves. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health, part of the Public Health Foundation of India, where he worked on issues of environmental health, climate change, and infectious diseases, focusing on surveillance and early warning systems. Prior to that, Azhar was with the Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health Cluster at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. He worked on a systematic review of self-management of NCDs and on developing a prioritized research agenda for NCD research in LMICs. His other research has been on the utilization of healthcare services and a systematic review of DOTS-based treatment of tuberculosis in India.

Azhar completed his M.P.H. through the universities of Sheffield and Copenhagen and the École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (EHESP) in Rennes, France. He is also a medical doctor with post-graduate medical residency training in Community Medicine from the J N Medical College, AMU, India. Azhar is the winner of the Erasmus Mundus scholarship of the European Commission and several other research grants including from the Wellcome Trust. He has published in several journals, presented at various conferences including as an invited speaker. He has also offered and completed short courses and trainings in related subjects. His interests are in health, environment, population, and development issues. A researcher who is passionate about health, the environment, and development, Azhar, along with other partners, helped develop India’s first heat-preparedness plan in Ahmedabad, India. He interned at World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva.

News

Gulrez Shah Azhar Guest Post: On the Launch of the Ahmedabad Heat Action Plan
With temperatures already spiking this summer in India, Ahmedabad is moving forward with its new Heat Action Plan to protect communities from deadly heat. We’ve been sharing our experiences with other cities and learning as well -- from Germany to Thailand -- joining with international community leaders to collaborate on how we can protect communities across the globe from the harmful effects of climate change ...
'Heat index' finds poorest areas in central India most vulnerable to heat waves
People living in underdeveloped parts of central India are most vulnerable to the health impacts of heat waves, a Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) for India has found. The index considered various factors, including a person's age, caste, income and health, as well as the green cover in an area, as having a bearing on people's heat vulnerability, and its analysis of 640 (of the 707) districts in the country finds 10 districts to be "very high risk" ...
Where Are India’s Heat Hotspots?
Heat waves across the world have killed tens of thousands of people since the turn of the century. In the U.S., more people die from deaths related to heat than all other natural phenomena combined. Parts of West Asia are expected to become inhospitable to human life by the end of this century. And in recent years, India and neighboring regions have experienced several devastating heat waves, causing the country to increasingly focus on a growing global concern—rising temperatures as a public health threat ...

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