About Craig

Craig Spencer, MD, MPH is a globally recognized emergency medicine physician and public health expert. His career spans nearly two decades of frontline humanitarian and public health work, blending expertise in global health, humanitarian response, and pandemic preparedness.

Craig Spencer has worked extensively across Africa and Southeast Asia as a field epidemiologist, addressing critical health and human rights challenges. His projects have included investigating maternal health and mortality in Burundi, examining child separation in emergencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, leading hepatitis E surveillance in Chad, and coordinating Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) national epidemiological response in Guinea during the Ebola outbreak. His clinical contributions also extend to providing medical care in the Caribbean, Central America, and West and East Africa, as well as aboard an MSF search-and-rescue vessel in the Mediterranean.

His work at Brown University focuses on the historical determinants of public health, with a particular emphasis on humanitarian response, global health security, and pandemic preparedness. he teaches on the history of the humanitarian sector and the role of global public health interventions. he is a faculty affiliate at the brown university pandemic center as well as the center for human rights and humanitarian studies.

He frequently shares his insights on public health and policy through writing, with pieces featured in leading outlets such as the New England Journal of Medicine, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Politico, STAT News, Los Angeles Times, Council on Foreign Relations’ Think Global Health, USA Today, and more.

In 2024, Dr. Spencer joined the Council on Foreign Relations as a life member.

Academic Appointments

Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy, and Practice | Brown University School of Public Health

Associate Professor of the Practice of Emergency Medicine | The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown UniversitY

Inaugural Faculty Fellow | Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University (July 2025)

Professional Affiliations

Board of Advisors — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières USA

Council Member—Issue One Council on Responsible Social Media

editorial advisory board—Vaccine journal

Council on Foreign Relations—Life Member

Background