Ans Irfan

Ans Irfan, MD, EdD, DrPH, ScD, MPH, MRPL, MA, is a multidisciplinary global public health practitioner, learning and development
strategist, and climate-health expert with nearly two decades of experience advancing health equity across domestic and international contexts. As a committed, award-winning educator, scholar, and pracademic, his work spans Pakistan, China, and the United States, integrating cross-cultural insight with a systems-level understanding of public health, technology, and education.

Prof. Irfan is the founding director of The Public Health Praxis Center, an ecosystem of applied research, leadership and
capacity-building programming, and science communications, focused on mobilizing science for social impact. Some of the signature programs include the Praxis Fellowship, the Science for Social Impact Award, and the Inclusive Health Equity Literacy Scholarship. Key global initiatives include ClimatexHealth Technical Assistance Initiative, a climate adaptation technical assistance mechanism, and the Climate & Health Equity Practice Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind program designed to develop climate leadership among physicians in the Global South.

His expertise merges multiple disciplines, including climate justice, decolonial theory, global health, environmental and occupational health, health policy, migrant health, climate change, sociocultural anthropology, organizational change management, program development and evaluation, and implementation science. Using a mixed-methods approach, he designs interdisciplinary, practice-anchored public policy and programmatic interventions to reduce social and health inequities.

Beyond academia, Dr. Irfan serves as a Fulbright Specialist. He has advised and supported public health and policy efforts with national and global institutions, including UNESCO’s Inclusive Policy Lab, the American Public Health Association’s Center for Climate, Health & Equity, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has also served as the founding director of the Center for Social Impact & Leadership at the DC Public Health Association.

He also serves as CFR Higher Education Ambassador at the Council on Foreign Relations. His previous educational leadership appointments include CET Faculty Fellow at the USC Center for Excellence in Teaching and Faculty Fellow with the Continuous Learning for Antiracist Curricular Change (CLARCC) Initiative. He serves as a Senior Fellow with the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellowship and as a climate expert with the Lancet Countdown U.S. Brief Working Group. He has also served as a Climate Security Fellow with the Center for Climate & Security, Council on Strategic Risks.

His science-policy experience includes serving as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Sciences, where he contributed to consensus studies on sexual and gender minority well-being and on rising midlife mortality and socioeconomic disparities. He also co-led an institutional DEI assessment initiative at the Academies. He is a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar, an affiliate with Harvard Innovation Labs and the Harvard Climate Entrepreneurs’ Circle, and a founding member and former Policy & Programming Director of the National Association for Doctors of Public Health (formerly the DrPH Coalition). His most recent engagement includes serving as a Social Science Fellow (Education & Workforce Development) through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Policy Fellowship program.