Chris Suharlim

Early life and education

Christian Suharlim was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese Indonesian descent, to Ricky Suharlim and Ng Lusiana. He has a brother, Edwin Suharlim. He received his medical degree, in 2011, from Universitas Indonesia and went on to obtain the advanced degree of Master of Public Health (2014) from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Career

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). It was here that he co-authored eight national guidelines as well as became a member of POKJA BPJS, a task force by the ministry that is in charge of designing referral system for Indonesia’s single payer system (SJSN) which was launched in 2014. As a part of his career, Suharlim also served as a research manager at Reiki & Ling-Chi Foundation, Indonesia where he worked on the effectiveness of the Reiki method.

Following his education, Suharlim assumed the position of Postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health at the age of 26 and was the youngest postdoc at the school. He works in economic evaluation of health interventions in low-and-middle income countries.

Currently in the United States, his research is based on cost-effectiveness of DOT-HAART for HIV patients in places like Lima, Peru. This research also evaluates the cost of immunization programs where resources are rare as well as improving the use of CER in developing countries. He has been working with Universitas Andalas since 2013 to implement improvement of diagnosis of MDR-TB in West Sumatera, Indonesia.

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 25 courses and served more than 1500 students. 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

Organization and Leadership

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 was elected president of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Postdoctoral Association for three 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. Given his contribution to the Harvard Chan School community, Suharlim was invited as part of the Dean’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (DACDI). He leads the work to improve recruitment of the School’s researchers, faculty members, and staff.

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.

Awards