Howard Hu, M.D., M.P.H., Sc.D.

Board Member

Dr. Hu is the Flora L. Thornton Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chair of the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (2020-present). He is a physician-epidemiologist, internist, and preventive medicine specialist, with a doctoral degree in epidemiology. Previously, he had been a Professor, Founding Director of the NIH Center for Children’s Environmental Health, Director of the Occupational Medicine Residency at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Associate Physician in the Channing Laboratory of the Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston (1990-2006); the NSF International Endowed Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Professor, Founding Director of the NIH Environmental Health Core Sciences Center, and Associate Physician at the University of Michigan and University of Michigan Health System (2006-2012); the Founding Dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Professor, University of Toronto (2012-2018); and Affiliate Professor, University of Washington School of Public Health (2018-2020).

Since 1990, Dr. Hu has led multi-institutional and international teams devoted to investigating the environmental, nutritional, social, psychosocial, genetic, and epigenetic determinants of chronic disease and impaired child development in the birth cohort and aging cohort studies in the U.S., Mexico, India, China, and elsewhere. His team’s work has generated over 400 publications and won several awards, such as the 1999 Progress and Achievement Award from the U.S. NIH/NIEHS, the 2011 Award of Excellence in Research from the American Public Health Association, and the 2015 John Goldsmith Award for Outstanding Contributions from the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. In his current position, Dr. Hu is continuing his NIH-funded environmental birth cohort research (the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants project: Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) (nih.gov) ), and co-leads the Global Burden of Disease-Pollution, Climate and Health initiative (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30318094), the USC Population Health COVID19 Pandemic Research Center (https://cprc.usc.edu/); and the USC Sustainability and Healthcare Initiative.

In 1999-2000, Dr. Hu was a Senior Faculty Fulbright Scholar in India. In terms of service, he was on the Board of Directors and served on four fact-finding missions for Physicians for Human Rights (Nobel Peace Prize co-winner, 1997); on the Board of Population and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; on the Board of Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Research Council; on the External Advisory Council of the U.S. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences; and was the Chair of the Research Commission for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Nobel Peace Prize, 1985). In the latter capacity, he and colleagues published “Nuclear Wastelands”, which was nominated for the U.S. National Book Award in 1996. Dr. Hu currently serves as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation; on the Energy Research Committee of the Health Effects Institute; and as the Co-Chair of the Research Council of the Public Health Foundation of India. In 2016, Dr. Hu was elected to Fellowship in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences At USC, Dr. Hu is leading a Department that, with over 120 full-time core faculty, 3 Institutes, 15 Research Centers, is one of the largest of its kind and ranked #2 in the nation in terms of funding from NIH. Under his leadership, the Department has solidified its identity as a uniquely powerful community of scientists, scholars, and champions for health equity, especially in the diverse urban communities of Los Angeles and beyond.

Dr. Hu was born and raised in New York City by a father who immigrated from Shanghai and a mother whose father was the Ambassador from China to Switzerland and the former Czeckoslovakia. He received his B.Sc. degree from Brown University, his M.D. degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his M.P.H., M.S., and Sc.D. degrees from Harvard. He is a devoted father of two boys, one a doctoral student in paleontology and the other a high school student, and a passionate fan of hiking, tennis, scuba diving, travel, and the fine arts.