Zachary Jonathan Ward

Zachary Jonathan Ward is an Assistant Professor of Health Decision Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, with appointments in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Center for Health Decision Science (CHDS), and as Director of Research at the Health Systems Innovation Lab (HSIL). He holds a PhD in Health Policy (Decision Science) from Harvard (2021), an MPH in Epidemiology from École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (2011), and a BSc in Global Health Management from Seattle Pacific University.

• PhD, Health Policy - Decision Science, Harvard University (2021)
• MPH, École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique, Paris (2011)
• BSc, Global Health Management, Seattle Pacific University

Zach's research bridges computational science and global health, with a focus on maternal mortality, obesity, cancer survivorship, and health policy modeling. He develops Amua, an open-source framework for microsimulation and probabilistic programming.

His 15 most recent publications span health equity interventions, social media impact analysis, childhood cancer outcomes, obesity prevention, and maternal health projections, utilizing microsimulation models and cost-effectiveness analysis across public health, oncology, and nutritional sciences.

Ward's work involves extensive global collaboration with NGOs in Tanzania, Malawi, and Rwanda, and he contributes to US health policy through modeling of WIC programs, school nutrition, and pharmacoeconomics.

He leads the Health Systems Innovation Lab, engages in health metrics through GBD 2021, and applies Bayesian methods, Markov chains, and decision analysis to address health disparities and inform evidence-based policy.