Dr. Leaning is a senior fellow at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University (Harvard FXB Center) and Professor of the Practice at Harvard School of Public Health. 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.
Dr. Leaning served as the director of the Harvard FXB Center from 2010 until 2018. Prior to her appointment, she served for five years as co-director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. In prior years, Dr. Leaning held progressively responsible roles in medical management and worked clinically in emergency medicine from 1978 (and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston from 1986-2005). She has served on the boards of directors of many non-profits and currently is a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes.
Her research interests focus on issues of public health and international law in response to war and disaster. She has field experience in assessment of these issues in a range of crisis situations (including Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Kosovo, the Middle East, Pakistan, former Soviet Union, Somalia, the Chad-Darfur border, and the African Great Lakes area) and is the author of many academic articles and book chapters. She earned her A.B. magna cum laude from Radcliffe College, her Masters of Science from Harvard School Public Health, and her M.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.