Christian Suharlim
Christian Suharlim, MD, MPH merupakan seorang peneliti dan praktisi di bidang kesehatan masyarakat (Public Health), dengan fokus penguatan sistem kesehatan di negara berkembang. Saat ini Suharlim merupakan seorang post-doctoral fellow, peneliti, dan pengajar di Harvard University.
Lahir di Jakarta, Indonesia, dan bersuku Tionghoa, Christian Suharlim merupakan putra sulung pasangan Ricky Suharlim dan Ng Lusiana. Suharlim memiliki seorang adik, Edwin Suharlim. Christian Suharlim menerima gelar dokter umum pada tahun 2011 dari Universitas Indonesia, dan menerima gelar lanjutan Master of Public Health pada tahun 2014 dari Harvard University
His health policy career began in 2011, when Suharlim served as a physician in the rural area of Panguragan, Indonesia. While there, he led two projects which addressed the health needs of two communities. By revitalizing a long-neglected disaster management program, Suharlim successfully prepared Panguragan region (population: 52.537) for the heavy flood of January 2012. As a result, 960 victims were quickly relocated to a centralized shelter where trained medical personnel were ready to address their health problems. Also, by analyzing Panguragan's tuberculosis and leprosy program implementation, Suharlim found that local public health officers were not screening households for active cases according to Indonesia's national healthcare guideline. He re-allocated financial incentives to be received after officers conducted their household contact screening rather than before, and raised the case-finding rate by 30%, increasing the number of patients treated and reducing the rate of disease transmission.
In 2012, he served as an officer for the Directorate of Health Care, Ministry of Health (Indonesia), where he gained a deeper understanding of Indonesia's healthcare system. During his work, he co-authored eight national guidelines, and was a member of POKJA BPJS, the ministerial task force in charge of designing referral system for SJSN, Indonesia's single payer system launched in 2014. Dr. Suharlim also served as a research manager at Reiki dan Ling-Chi Foundation, Indonesia; evaluating the effectiveness of the Reiki method of alternative healing. Currently in the United States, his research include investigating cost-effectiveness of DOT-HAART for HIV patients in Lima, Peru; evaluating the cost of immunization programs in resource-poor settings,
and developing a global landscape on the use of CER in developing countries. Additionally, since 2013 he has been working in collaboration with Universitas Andalas to implement MDR-TB diagnosis improvement in West Sumatera, Indonesia.
Dr. Suharlim teaches the Public Health Nanocourse program at the Harvard Medical School, a condensed short-course to introduce the communities to the field and subfields of Public Health. To date, the Public Health Nanocourse program has delivered 20 courses and served more than 1070 students. Dr. Suharlim is also a frequent contributor to Jakarta Post in the field of immunization, Tuberculosis, Tobacco Consumption, Water and Sanitation, Health insurance and care delivery,
Suharlim actively participated in local organizations. He was the Local Executive Board of the Asian medical Students Association in 2008, and was the National Advisory board in 2011. Within Harvard, he presided the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Postdoctoral Association for two consecutive terms, advocating for an increase in minimum wage policy and healthcare benefits for 600+ postdoctoral research fellows and research associates. He Increased the organization membership by 50% and leadership enrollment by 28%, and successfully managed the Public Health Nanocourse educational program to achieve record-breaking attendance.
In 2013, Suharlim co-founded the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Media Communication Forum, that helps public health professionals write for the media- an initiative that he continued in Indonesia under his organization, The Suharlim Foundation for Public Health Research and Implementation. The Suharlim foundation's mission to improve health policy by information dissemination through the media; strengthen public health programs particularly in the areas of maternal and child health, infectious disease, and access to water and sanitation, and improve access to care for the socio-economically disadvantaged. With a team of 3 physician-researchers, Suharlim has assisted Indonesian physicians in the creation of more than 50 op-eds/media articles. His foundation has also published 11 in-house articles to the media, and supported Suharlim's research interest in using diagnosis decision support system to shift medical delivery tasks to nurses.
Since 2014, Suharlim serve as the medical advisor on the board of Konsula, Indonesia's #1 doctors' directory where patients can book doctors online, assisting the reform of Indonesian Primary Care delivery system post-BPJS.