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Jennifer Leaning  

Director of the Harvard François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University,and the FXB professor of the practice of health and human rights at Harvard School of Public Health

Jennifer Leaning, M.D., S.M.H., is the director of the Harvard François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University,and the FXB professor of the practice of health and human rights at Harvard School of Public Health. Her research interests focus on issues of public health, medical ethics, and early warning in response to war and disaster, human rights and international humanitarian law in crisis settings, and problems of human security in the context of forced migration and conflict. She has field experience in problems of public health assessment and human rights in a range of crisis situations (including Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Kosovo, the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Somalia, the Chad-Darfur border, and the African Great Lakes area) and has written widely on these issues. Prior to her current appointment, Leaning served for five years as co-director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. From 1999 to 2005, Leaning directed the Program on Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights at the FXB Center. As associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, she is a faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. During the 1980s and 1990s, Leaning held progressively responsible roles in medical management at Harvard Community Health Plan – now Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates – and from 1992 to 1997 served as the Medical Director.

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