IDRC grantee honoured with the Order of Canada

Bhutta, renowned for his innovative research in maternal and child health, nutrition and food security, preparedness and health systems strengthening, climate change and health, and other areas, has improved the lives of millions in underserved communities worldwide. He has contributed to shaping WHO policies, developing community health programs, and improving sexual and reproductive health in fragile health systems.
As a distinguished university professor and founding director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health and the Institute for Global Health and Development at Aga Khan University in Pakistan and a global health leader at SickKids Centre for Global Child Health in Toronto, Canada, his work reflects a commitment to innovation and service.
In recent years, Bhutta has led a number of IDRC projects, including one to improve maternal and newborn health in Tanzania and another to inform interventions related to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in conflict settings.
He is also leading a number of research efforts to unpack the link between social determinants and women’s health, including climate change. For example, Bhutta is currently leading the following IDRC projects:
- Scoping review of the climate change and sexual and reproductive health nexus in Asia, which aims to enhance the understanding of existing evidence on the connections between climate change and sexual and reproductive health (including mental health). The research will also identify priority areas for future studies and outline the policy and practice implications associated with each.
- Promoting resilience, preparedness, adaptation and response in 4C (COVID-19, conflict, climate change and rising cost-of-living) emergencies, which seeks to inform efforts to improve national, regional and global capabilities for planning and implementing preparedness, promoting resilience and adapting in complex 4C crises within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Strengthening preparedness for future pandemics among working women and factory workers living in urban informal settlements in Bangladesh, funded under Women RISE, an initiative of IDRC, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to support global action-oriented, gender-transformative research by teams of researchers from low- and middle-income countries and Canada.
- Building a consortium to address complex challenges influencing human health to improve progress towards health and health-related SDGs, aimed at harnessing local organizational and research capacity for a longer-term perspective to systematically generate evidence and monitor implementation of the health-related SDGs in light of climate change, inequality and COVID-19, among other global development challenges.
- Multidisciplinary consultations to identify gaps and priorities in research to address climate change and health to support a multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary consultation process to identify research priorities in the area of climate change and health.
With over 1,400 publications and numerous recognitions, including the John Dirks Canada Gairdner 2022 Global Health Award, Bhutta’s achievements inspire health-care advancements globally.