Ruma Rajbhandari, MD, MPH

Associate Scientist, Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham & Women’s Hospital; Associate Faculty Director, Harvard Initiative on Global Health Quality, Harvard Global Health Institute Instructor, Harvard Medical School

Ruma Rajbhandari, MD, MPH is an Associate Scientist in the Division of Global Health Equity and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. Her global health focus is on health systems strengthening, human resources for health, quality of care and maternal and child health. Dr. Rajbhandari also serves as the Research Advisor for the Nick Simons Institute, a Nepal-based non-governmental organization whose mission is to innovate solutions in rural healthcare –through training and hospital support– and to advocate for their scale up with the government of Nepal. Her clinical practice is in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy where her primary interest is viral hepatitis, particularly hepatitis B, and general gastroenterology.

Dr. Rajbhandari is a graduate of the Doris and Howard Hiatt Global Health Equity Internal Medicine Residency Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. During residency, she divided her time between Boston and rural clinics and small district hospitals in the impoverished areas of Lesotho, Rwanda and Nepal. While in Nepal, she worked with the Nick Simons Institute and Possible. Currently, she also serves on Possible’s Advisory Board.

Dr. Rajbhandari earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale University, her MD from Harvard Medical School and her MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. She has also completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and earned a diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Gorgas Memorial Institute in Lima, Peru.