Nahid Bhadelia, MD, MALD

Dr. Bhadelia is currently on sabbatical from Boston University, having joined the White House COVID Response Team as senior policy advisor for global COVID response.

Dr. Bhadelia is the founding director of BU Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy and Research and an associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), a state-of-the-art maximum containment research facility at BU. She is a board-certified infectious diseases physician and an internationally recognized leader in highly communicable and emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) with clinical, field, academic, and policy experience in pandemic preparedness and response.

Over the last decade, Dr. Bhadelia designed and served as the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit (SPU), a medical unit designed to care for patients with highly communicable diseases, and a state designated Ebola Treatment Center. She has prior and ongoing experience in health system response to pathogens such as H1N1, Zika, Lassa fever, Marburg virus disease, and COVID-19 at the state, national, and global levels, including medical countermeasure evaluation, diagnostic positioning, infection control policy development, and healthcare worker training. Dr. Bhadelia serves on state, national, and interagency groups focused on biodefense priority setting, development of clinical care guidelines, and medical countermeasures research. She has served as a subject matter expert to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Defense (DoD), and World Bank.

Dr. Bhadelia has experience with direct patient care, outbreak response, and medical countermeasures research during multiple Ebola virus disease outbreaks in West and East Africa. During the West African Ebola epidemic, she served as a clinician in several Ebola treatment units, working with the World Health Organization and Partners in Health. She previously served as the clinical lead  of (and now advises on) a DoD-funded viral hemorrhagic fever research group in Uganda, entitled Joint Mobile Emerging Disease Intervention Clinical Capability (JMEDICC) program. Dr. Bhadelia codirects the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center–funded research training program in Liberia, entitled Boston University and University of Liberia Emerging and Epidemic Virus Research (BULEEVR). Her research focuses on global health security, as well as identification of safe and effective clinical interventions and infection control measures related to viral hemorrhagic fevers and other emerging infectious diseases. She currently serves as a site principal investigator of the NIH RECOVER trial examining Long Covid, and co-lead of Massachusetts Coalition for Pathogen Readiness’ (MASSCPR) Long Covid research working group.

She has publications in Nature, Science, New England Journal of Medicine and other prestigious journals, as well as in press including The Atlantic and Time magazines. Her work has been featured documentaries by National Geographic as well as NOVA. She was an NBC/MSNBC Medical contributor 2020-2022.