Margaret Elizabeth Kruk is an American public health expert, physician and health systems researcher who is serving as Distinguished Professor of Health Systems and Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, she was Professor of Health Systems at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Quality of Evidence for Health Transformation (QuEST) Centers and Network. Kruk is most known for her work on measuring health system quality and its impact on healthcare demand, health outcomes, and trust, using observational studies, implementation science and econometric methods. She has published more than 200 research articles and book chapters. In 2018, she chaired the Lancet Global Health Commission on High Quality Health Systems. She co-edited the third edition of the Disease Control Priorities book series and served on The Lancet Commissions on Investing in Health I and III, and the Institute of Medicine Committee on Health System Strengthening, among others. She also served as co-lead for the Bulletin of the World Health Organization Special Issue on Health Care Quality in the SDG Era.
Education and early career Kruk graduated from McMaster University with a bachelor's degree in Arts and Science in 1991, followed by a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1994. After completing her residency, she earned her medical license from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 1995 and board certification from the Canadian College of Family Physicians in 1996. Between 1996 and 1998, she was a Family and Emergency Physician and Chief of Staff at Geraldton District Hospital, and later worked as Interim Country Manager and Project Physician for Doctors without Borders (MSF) in Lebanon. In 1999, she enrolled at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she received a Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Management in 2000.
Career Kruk began her academic career at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where she assumed the roles of assistant research scientist and lecturer before becoming an assistant professor in 2007. In 2010, she joined Columbia University as an assistant professor and became an associate professor in 2014. Subsequently, she was appointed associate professor of global health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015. In 2019, she became a professor of health systems. In 2020, Kruk became director of the Harvard QuEST Centers and Network, a multi-country research consortium focused on developing tools to assess health system quality, testing solutions to health system deficits, and supporting high-impact health systems research globally. Prior to her roles in academia, Kruk served as the policy advisor for health for the UN Millennium Project and was an associate and later engagement manager for McKinsey and Company. Kruk's policy engagement has extended to the Joint Health Systems Research Committee for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the UK Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust, which she chaired from 2020 to 2021. She has served in advisory roles to organizations, including the World Bank Technical Advisory Group on Investing for Resilient Health Systems (2021), and the Gates Foundation Technical Advisory Group on Exemplars in COVID-19 response (2020/23). In 2025, Kruk left Harvard and joined Washington University School of Medicine as Distinguished Professor of Health Systems and Medicine and director of the University Wide QuEST Center.
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