Public Health Perspectives is a podcast series targeted towards strengthening the future public health workforce. Join us as we explore the narratives of public health care professionals and gain insight on career paths that shape the profession. 

In this episode of Public Health Perspectives, I’m speaking with Dr. Ans Irfan, a public health scholar-practitioner currently based at Harvard University, where he is exploring the intersection of religion and public health policies with an emphasis on climate action. He also serves as a faculty member at George Washington University. He is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar. Recent projects include climate innovation and information technology, climate change and farmworkers’ mental health equity, the intersection of theology and public health, traffic wardens and climate adaptations in Pakistan, and the evaluation of physicians’ training on climate change and health. 

Dr. Irfan’s expertise is in social critique relating to health equity. He looks for ways to take a critical lens to existing systems, to not only challenge and critique them but also to offer solutions that are upstream. As a professor, his goal is to help students take a critical lens on the frameworks they’re learning and to become social change agents beyond just memorizing facts and figures. As a researcher, his goal is to produce tangible benefits for marginalized communities.

Listen to our full conversation below:

• Public Health, Pandemics, and Intellectualization of Violence
• Climate Crisis and Structural Racism–Peas in a Pod: Urgent Need for Climate Competent Care as a Structural Competency to Advance Climate Medicine
• Climate Accords: Potent Structural Determinants of Health
• COVID-19 & Epoch of Incredulity
• Ode to Public Health Academy: Urgent Call to Reform and Go Beyond Pretty Words
• COVID-19 Amidst Carceral Contexts: The Overton Window of Political Possibility and Policy Change