Scholar Profile
Harleen Marwah
Medicine
Biography
Dr. Harleen Marwah, MD MS, is a Pediatrician, an Editorial Fellow at the New England Journal of Medicine & an appointed member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Dr. Marwah is the Founding Chair & now Chairperson of the Board of Directors for Medical Students for a Sustainable Future (MS4SF), a community of 700+ medical trainees across 100+ medical schools working to combat the health harms of the climate crisis. She was selected as a 2021 Grist 50 Fixer & earned the 2020 Health Care Without Harm Emerging Physician Leader Award in recognition of her work founding and leading MS4SF.
During her time as a Pediatric resident at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), she was a champion for bringing climate and health education into graduate medical education. She ideated and launched the longitudinal Climate Justice and Health Equity curriculum at CHOP and collaborated with Pediatric leaders nationally through the Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD). She has presented this work globally, including at the International Conference on Residency Education and at the United Nations 28th Conference of Parties (COP 28).
Dr. Marwah earned her M.D. from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and her M.S. in Global Medicine and B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention from the University of Southern California. She has also engaged in collaborative work with the United Nations on The Paris Agreement, attending the COP20 in Lima, Peru and COP21 in Paris, France.
High school: Lutheran High School La Verne
Degrees
| College | Year | Degree |
|---|---|---|
University of Southern CaliforniaLos Angeles, CA |
2015 | M.S. Global Medicine |
University of Southern CaliforniaLos Angeles, CA |
2015 | B.S. Health Promotion & Disease Prevention |
George Washington UniversityWashington, DC |
2021 | M.D. Medicine |
News and Highlights
Leading the Nation Towards a Healthier Climate. Dr. Harleen Marwah, MS ‘11, was appointed to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to provide recommendations to the federal government on environmental justice. As a pediatrician and Editorial Fellow at the New England Journal of Medicine, Harleen is making an impact nationally and globally, having joined the UPenn delegation to COP28 the United Nations’ largest climate change conference hosted in Dubai, UAE.
Recognizing Impact: Congratulations to Harleen Marwah, MS ’11, who was named a 2021 Grist 50 Fixer, an annual list of “emerging leaders from across the U.S. who are working on fresh, real-world solutions to our world's biggest challenges.” Harleen, a medical student at George Washington University, was recently matched for her residency in pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Climate Crisis and Public Health: Harleen Marwah, MS '11 was recently featured in the Huffington Post for her work leading a volunteer grassroots coalition called Medical Students for a Sustainable Future, with more than 100 students from 34 medical schools and programs across the U.S. (including Sarah Hsu, MS '13) focused on coordinating efforts to push for more education on the intersection between climate change and public health. Read the article here.
Food for Thought: Harleen Marwah, MS ’11, reflects on her time at the UN Conference in Rome investigating the relationship between diet and disease.
Eliminating Food Waste: Harleen Marwah, MS ’11 connected with Robert Lee, CEO of Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, an organization that aims to curb food waste in New York City. Harleen interviewed Mr. Lee for a writing competition on food security and was subsequently selected to attend the UN Food and Agriculture Organization Committee on Food Security Conference in Rome, Italy this October. Read her article here.
Changing Climates: Harleen Marwah, MS '11, is the youth liaison for the SeaTrust Institute’s delegation at the United Nations International Conference on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris, where she is helping to lead their efforts to engage young people around the world on topics that include agriculture and food safety, indigenous populations, interfaith perspectives and moral obligation, intergenerational equity, and public health.
Chalk it Up: USC’s Harleen Marwah, MS ’11, dreamt up Chalk the Block, a creative community event where children from South Los Angeles were invited to come onto campus last February and decorate sections of pavement with their dreams. The event received the honor of the National Association of College and University Residence Halls' "Event of the Month" for innovative programming, and now it’s blueprint is being implemented at schools across the country.