Lincoln C. Chen

Dr. Lincoln Chen is President Emeritus of the China Medical Board, where he served as President 2006-2014. Started in 1914, the Board was endowed by John D. Rockefeller as an independent foundation that seeks to advance health in China and Asia by strengthening medical education, research, and policies.

In 2001-2006, Dr. Chen was the founding director of the Global Equity Initiative of Harvard University’s Asia Center. In an earlier decade, 1987-1996, Dr. Chen was the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health, Director of the university-wide Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and Chair of Department of Population and International Health in the Harvard School of Public Health. For the five years 1997-2001, Dr. Chen served as Executive Vice-President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1973-1987, he represented the Ford Foundation in India and Bangladesh.

Dr. Chen has served as board/committee/advisor to many non-profit organizations – Greentree Foundation, BRAC/USA, CARE/USA, Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington. In 2004-2007, he was the Special Envoy of the WHO Director-General in Human Resources for Health, and in 2006, he was elected the first Board Chair of the Global Health Workforce Alliance, a public-private partnership with a secretariat based at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Dr. Chen is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He graduated from Princeton University (BA), Harvard Medical School (MD), and the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (MPH). He was trained in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital.