Dr. Kruk is Professor of Health Systems at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In January 2025, Prof. Margaret E. Kruk will become Distinguished Professor of Health Systems and Medicine in the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Kruk studies how health systems perform in improving health and generating trust across countries. Working with colleagues in Africa, India, South America, and Europe, she develops novel measures of health system quality and measures how system performance affects population demand for health care, health outcomes, and confidence. Dr. Kruk and her team use implementation science and econometric methods to design and evaluate large-scale health system reforms.
Dr. Kruk is Director of the QuEST Centers and Network, a multi-country research consortium working to produce a global evidence base for improving health systems. The QuEST Network responds to the findings of the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems in the SDG Era (HQSS Commission), a global initiative chaired by Dr. Kruk. QuEST develops new instruments to assess health system quality, tests structural solutions to health system deficits, and supports expansion of high-impact health systems research in partner countries.
Previously Dr. Kruk was Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management and Director of the Better Health Systems Initiative at Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy at the University of Michigan. She has held posts at the United Nations Development Program and McKinsey and Company and practiced medicine in northern Ontario, Canada. She holds an MD degree from McMaster University and an MPH from Harvard University.