Dr. Ratzan has three decades of pioneering accomplishments in the U.S. and globally in health communication, health literacy, and strategic diplomacy. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives.
He has been published extensively in the field of health communication and policy including articles related to vaccine literacy and uptake in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Nature Medicine, National Academies of Medicine Perspectives. During the COVID pandemic, he written articles and offered expertise including in the BMJ, Washington Post, STAT News, New York Times, and Financial Times and also in broadcast including BBC World News, Sky News, and MSNBC. others.
He is Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York. He recently was a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. He has worked in multiple sectors with Johnson & Johnson, ABInBev and USAID in Brussels, New York and Washington DC.
He is currently on the Board of Global Health for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. the RAND Health Advisory Board, and World Information Transfer, Inc. a UN accredited NGO. He has served as Co-Chair of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child Innovation Working Group, and on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Board of Scientific Counselors, Office of Infectious Disease.
He co-founded CONVINCE -- Covid-19 New Vaccine INformation Communication and Engagement. He leads efforts with CONVINCE USA with the Vaccine Equity Cooperative and with the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) as well as private sector activities with the Business Partners to CONVINCE with the U.S. Council for International Business Foundation. Building on his work in the 1990s as a professor and Founding Director of the Emerson-Tufts Masters Program in Health Communication, Dr. Ratzan co-directs the Masters Program in Health Communication for Social Change at CUNY SPH.
Dr. Ratzan is a co-author of the term health literacy adopted by HHS and integrated in the U.S. Affordable Care Act, defined as "the degree to which an individual has the capacity to obtain, communicate, process, and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions." His books include the Mad Cow Crisis: Health and the Public Good, Attaining Global Health: Challenges and Opportunities, and AIDS: Effective Health Communication for the 90s.
He holds adjunct professorial appointments at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Tufts University School of Medicine, and the University of St Andrews School of Medicine.
Dr. Ratzan has an M.D. from the University of Southern California, an M.P.A. from Harvard Kennedy School, and an M.A. in Communication from Emerson College.
