Headshot for Fabian Reitzug, smiling, short brown hair, glasses

Fabian Reitzug, DPhil, MSc

HGHI-Salata Burke Climate and Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Fabian Reitzug is an HGHI-Salata Burke Climate and Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. He is also a Research Associate at PIVOT Madagascar.

Fabian's background is in epidemiology and social science. He holds a doctoral degree in Population Health, which he completed at the University of Oxford's Big Data Institute. His research integrated fine-scale human GPS mobility data, household surveys, remote sensing data, and village infrastructure information to uncover the local drivers of schistosomiasis transmission, a major waterborne parasitic disease affecting 250 million people globally.

Prior to starting his doctorate, Fabian worked as a Consultant at the World Bank Group in Senegal for three years, where he was a Carlo Schmid Fellow. He holds an MSc in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation from the University of Oxford and a B.A. from Sciences Po Paris.

As an HGHI-Salata Burke Climate and Health Postdoctoral Fellow, Fabian conducts research in collaboration with Dr Matthew H. Bonds at Harvard Medical School and the global health NGO PIVOT Madagascar to understand the impacts of extreme weather events in rural Madagascar, with the aim of improving disaster response through local solutions. Specifically, his work seeks to quantify tropical cyclone mortality in rural Madagascar and aims to understand how community health workers (CHWs) can reduce climate-related morbidity and mortality through disaster preparation, response, and resilience-building. Using cyclone-prone areas of rural Madagascar as a case study, his work integrates survey data, community-based vital records, and remote sensing data to quantify population-level health impacts of extreme weather events, identify CHW response patterns before, during, and after disasters, and evaluate the effectiveness of training programs in enhancing CHW-led climate adaptation strategies.