Dr. Craig Spencer

Craig Spencer, MD MPH, is an emergency medicine physician and an Associate Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at Brown University School of Public Health. He is known for surviving Ebola.

Dr. Spencer has worked in Africa and Southeast Asia as a field epidemiologist on numerous projects examining access to medical care and human rights, including measuring mortality and maternal health in Burundi, child separation in emergencies in D.R. Congo and South Sudan, hepatitis E surveillance response program in Chad, and coordinating Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) national epidemiological response in Guinea during the Ebola outbreak.

In addition to his international public health work, Dr. Spencer has provided medical care in the Caribbean, Central America, West and East Africa, and onboard a MSF medical search and rescue boat in the Mediterranean. In 2019, he was elected to the Board of Directors for Doctors Without Borders USA; in 2024, he joined the Council on Foreign Relations as a life member.

Dr. Spencer's work at Brown University focuses on the historical foundations of public health, with a particular emphasis on the fields of humanitarian response, global health, and pandemic preparedness and response. An advocate for equitable access to medical countermeasures, diagnostics, and treatment, he also explores the historical foundations for the COVID response, based on the response to previous pandemics.

His writing has appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Politico, Los Angeles Times, Council on Foreign Relation's Think Global Health, USA Today and other outlets.