Emma Lengle received her MD from the University of Oslo in Norway and her Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is currently pursuing a PhD in social medicine at the University of Oslo’s Department of Community Medicine and Global Health. In September 2024, she joined the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine as a visiting graduate student, where she works closely with Dr. Salmaan Keshavjee and Dr. Marty Zeve on her dissertation research.
Dr. Lengle has been deeply involved in academic and public discussion around policymaking for health equity. In 2022, she joined an international team of health equity researchers led by the Center for Global Health Inequalities Research to investigate social inequality in global COVID-19 mortality. Later the same year, she co-founded the University of Oslo Working Group on Racism, Discrimination, and Health. In 2023, she became a member of the second Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health. Her essays, articles, and op-eds have appeared across Norwegian health professional journals and national news outlets.
Dr. Lengle’s research explores issues that arise in the development and implementation of public policy aiming to ameliorate urban health disparities. To do so, she engages theories and methods of policy research at the intersection of anthropology, sociology, and science studies (STS) to public health policy. In 2023-2024, she conducted 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork within the Oslo Department of Health, tracing the efforts of civil servants and local politicians to reduce the city’s growing levels of health inequality. Her work explores the role of normative frameworks, contested evidence, and participatory practice in policymaking processes. Dr. Lengle asks scholars and policymakers alike to engage with the impact of policymaking processes themselves on the pursuit of more equitable futures.