Prabhat JhaOC[1][2] (born February 12, 1965) is an Indian-Canadian epidemiologist currently working in the field of global health.
Jha is the founding director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario. His research focuses primarily on premature mortality resulting from HIV/AIDS, tobacco, alcohol, malaria, maternal, and child health, infectious and non-communicable diseases.[3]
Jha was born in Ranchi, India the state of Jharkhand. When he was six years old, his family moved to Winnipeg Canada where his father, Bidhu Jha, worked as a civil engineer and went on to become an NDP member of Manitoba’s legislative assembly.[4] Together, with his older brother and younger sister, he was raised by his mother.
After graduation, Jha worked as a team leader at the World Bank, contributing to the development of the Second National HIV/AIDS Control Program in India.[6] He later worked as a senior scientist in health and poverty for the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health.
In 2002, he founded the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where he has directed a variety of large scale public health studies, most notably the Indian Million Death Study on premature mortality.[7] Jha’s research focuses on the causes of premature death in developing countries worldwide, and he has been recognized internationally for his work on smoking and tobacco related mortality.[3] He is also a member of the Disease Control Priorities Project.
Jha has served as a health advisor to several governments including the Government of Canada on the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Tobacco Control, the Government of South Africa on its National Health Insurance Expert Committee, and the Government of India on the Advisory Committee for the National AIDS Control Organization.[1]
He was a founding senior editor of the scientific journal eLife[6] from 2011-2018 and is an International Advisory Board Member for The Lancet Global Health journal.[1]
The Ontario Premier’s Research Excellence Award (2004)[1]
The Luther Terry Award from the American Cancer Society for Research on Tobacco Control (2012) “for Ground breaking Research on Tobacco Control”[1]
Officer of the Order of Canada (2012) “For his contributions to epidemiology and the economics of global health, which have influenced the development of global health policy”[1]
Prabhat Jha, Frank Chaloupka (eds) (2000) Tobacco Control in Developing Countries, Oxford University Press, ISBN0192632469
Dean T Jamison, Joel G Breman, Anthony R Measham, George Alleyne, Mariam Claeson, David B Evans, Prabhat Jha, Anne Mills, and Philip Musgrove (eds) (2006) Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, Washington (DC): World Bank, ISBN0-8213-6179-1
Dean T. Jamison, Joel G. Breman, Anthony R. Measham, George Alleyne, Mariam Claeson, David B. Evans, Prabhat Jha, Anne Mills, Philip Musgrove (eds) (2006) Priorities in Health: Disease Control Priorities Companion Volume, World Bank Publications, ISBN0821362607
"Effects of ramipril on cardiovascular and microvascular outcomes in people with diabetes mellitus: Results of the HOPE study and MICRO-HOPE substudy. Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation Study Investigators". Lancet. 355 (9200): 253–259. 2000. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(99)12323-7. PMID10675071. S2CID1863533. 3000+ citations in Web of Science as of 2022
Black, R. E.; Cousens, S.; Johnson, H. L.; Lawn, J. E.; Rudan, I.; Bassani, D. G.; Jha, P.; Campbell, H.; Walker, C. F.; Cibulskis, R.; Eisele, T.; Liu, L.; Mathers, C. (2010). "Global, regional, and national causes of child mortality in 2008: A systematic analysis". The Lancet. 375 (9730): 1969–87. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60549-1. PMID20466419. S2CID27812760. 600+ citations in Web of Science as of 2013
Prabhat Jha, Sir Richard Peto (2014) Global Effects of Smoking, of Quitting, and of Taxing Tobacco, NEJM 2014, 370:60-8 doi:10.1056/NEJMra1308383
