Richard Cash ([email protected])

Dr Richard Cash is Senior Lecturer in Global Health with the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He holds an MD from the New York University School of Medicine and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Cash and his colleagues conducted the first clinical trials of Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) in adult and paediatric cholera patients and patients with other infectious causes of diarrhoea at the Cholera Research Laboratory (now ICDDR,B) in Bangladesh. Other in-country studies included the first field trials and community-based trials of ORT and the use of amino acids (glycine) as an additional substrate.

He was the Principal Investigator of the Applied Diarrheal Disease Research (ADDR) Project, a programme that assisted developing country scientists to hone their research skills by conducting their own research projects. Over 150 studies, involving more than 350 investigators were funded in twelve countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Dr. Cash also directed a programme in research ethics that focused on training for fellows from Asia, and research ethics workshops at HSPH and in 12 countries. He is the senior editor of Casebook on Ethical Issues in International Health Research, a WHO publication.

Scaling up health programmes is a major interest and he is the senior editor of From One to Many:  Scaling Up Health Programs in Low-Income Countries. He has also documented the scaling up of the BRAC ORT programme in A Simple Solution and as a member of the BRAC Health Group, he and colleagues have documented the BRAC TB DOTS program in Making Tuberculosis History: Community-Based Solutions for Millions.

He was a Visiting Professor at the Public Health Foundation of India in Delhi and has visiting faculty appointments at the James P. Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Sciences Studies, in Trivandrum Kerala India, and the Graduate School of International Health Development at the University of Nagasaki. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award for his work on ORT and in 2011 received the Fries Prize for Improving Health.