Image of Chunling Lu

Chunling Lu, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Lu studied international relations (BA) and political science (MA) at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and sociology (MA) and applied statistics (MS) at Syracuse University, where she also received her PhD in economics. She received postdoctoral training on health care policy analysis at the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy, and joined the School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine in 2008 after three-years work at the Harvard Institute for Global Health as Senior Research Associate.

Affliates

Dr. Lu’s research has three emphases: (1) investigating child and adolescent health and well-being at the global, regional, and country levels with a special focus on resources invested and the related outcomes; (2) conducting economic evaluation of health policy or medical interventions; and (3) developing data and methods to facilitate the investigations in the first and second areas. Dr. Lu has been serving as a member of the Joint Technical Working Group for Early Childhood Development Metrics hosted by the UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank. She is a technical consultant and contributor to the UNESCO Global Report on Early Childhood Care & Education in 2024. She serves as a commissioner to the Lancet Series on Adolescent Health and Well-Being (2022-2025) and leads an investigation on financing adolescent health and well-being. She also leads a series, commissioned by The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, on resource allocation to child and adolescent mental health and related cost-effective interventions in the Western Pacific region. Dr. Lu is leading costs and cost-effectiveness analyses for projects, funded by NIH, that focus on delivering mental health and nurturing care by training community health workers in rural India and Guatemala. She obtained the Fulbright US Scholarship and conducted research and teaching at the National Taiwan University in 2024.   

Prevalence and number of children living in institutional care: global, regional, and country estimates.
Authors: Authors: Desmond C, Watt K, Saha A, Huang J, Lu C.
Lancet Child Adolesc Health
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Contraceptive Use in Adolescent Girls and Adult Women in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
Authors: Authors: Li Z, Patton G, Sabet F, Zhou Z, Subramanian SV, Lu C.
JAMA Netw Open
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Development assistance for community health workers in 114 low- and middle-income countries, 2007-2017
Authors: Authors: Lu C, Palazuelos D, Luan YQ, Sachs SE, Mitnick CD, Rhatigan J, Perry HB
Bulletin of World Health Organization
Inequalities in early childhood care and development in low/middle-income countries: 2010-2018.
Authors: Authors: Lu C, Cuartas J, Fink G, McCoy D, Liu K, Li Z, Daelmans B, Richter L.
BMJ Glob Health
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Assessing national and subnational inequalities in medical care utilization and financial risk protection in Rwanda.
Authors: Authors: Liu K, Subramanian SV, Lu C.
Int J Equity Health
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A Goal Within Reach: Chapter 1 A Neglected Group in Monitoring the SDGs
Authors: Authors: Lu C, Desmond C
Lumos Foundation
Health inequality and community-based health insurance: a case study of rural Rwanda with repeated cross-sectional data.
Authors: Authors: Liu K, Cook B, Lu C.
Int J Public Health
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Tracking development assistance for reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in conflict-affected countries.
Authors: Authors: Li Z, Richter L, Lu C.
BMJ Glob Health
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Early childhood development: an imperative for action and measurement at scale.
Authors: Authors: Richter L, Black M, Britto P, Daelmans B, Desmond C, Devercelli A, Dua T, Fink G, Heymann J, Lombardi J, Lu C, Naicker S, Vargas-Barón E.
BMJ Glob Health
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Global Development Assistance for Adolescent Health From 2003 to 2015.
Authors: Authors: Li Z, Li M, Patton GC, Lu C.
JAMA Netw Open
View full abstract on Pubmed