It is with our greatest honor to announce the winner of 2020 CHPAMS Inspiration Award, Dr. Shenggen Fan from China Agricultural University.
CHPAMS established the Inspiration Award in August 2016 to recognize members’ extraordinary determination to challenge the “status quo”, overcome significant barriers and achieve accomplishments in scientific research, community service, or innovative activities that are above and beyond the expectation. The Inspiration Award was exclusively funded through member donations.
CHPAMS started the nomination process and formed a five-member Award Committee that was made up of CHPAMS former President Dr. Xi Chen and four distinguished researchers as below.
Gordon LIU, PhD, Yangtze River Scholar Professor of Economics, Director of China Center for Health Economics Research, Peking University National School of Development
Yaojiang SHI, PhD, Professor and Director of the Institute of Educational Experimental Economics, Shaanxi Normal University, Winner of the 2018 CHPAMS Inspiration Award
Winnie YIP, PhD, Professor of the Practice of International Health Policy and Economics, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health
Hai YU, MD, PhD, Professor, Director of International Education Program and Director of Center of Distance Education, Zhejiang University School of Medicine
We received several highly qualified nominations. All the individuals and team members being nominated have exemplified perseverance, dedication, and leadership in their impressive achievements and accomplishments. After independent assessments, the Award Committee selected Dr. Shenggen Fan as the winner of the 2020 CHPAMS Inspiration Award. This selection was later unanimously approved by CHPAMS’s new leadership team – Board of Directors (2020-2022) –led by its new President Dr. Lizheng Shi.
As a world-class researcher and extraordinary leader on global food security and nutrition policy, Dr. Shenggen Fan has been at the frontlines of advancing knowledge and influencing global and national food-policy agendas to improve global health. Throughout Shenggen’s illustrious career, he has demonstrated high academic integrity and is respected by peers and junior researchers as the role model. His vision, leadership, and persistence in research makes him highly qualified for this award.
Congratulations to Dr. Shenggen Fan!
More about Dr. Shenggen Fan
Dr. Shenggen Fan’s rise to his prominent role as a leading researcher and global food security and nutrition policy influencer is nothing short of extraordinary. For more than 30 years, Shenggen Fan has been at the frontlines of research on agricultural, food and nutrition economics. He has made significant headway in advancing knowledge on public investment, poverty reduction and development, and food security, profoundly influencing global and national food-policy agendas through his tireless public service. Back in the 2000s, his work contributed greatly to understanding of the causes and consequences of the 2007/08 global food price crisis that pushed millions of people into malnutrition. More recently, he co-authored the LANCET Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Shenggen has been and continues to be truly one of the most compelling and articulate advocates for global food and nutrition security today. This is of fundamental importance as we are all in the COVID-19 pandemic with significant threat of global food crisis.
In 2009, Shenggen assumed office as the Director General of International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a position that he leverages every day to undertake and communicate critical research and to advocate for pro-poor policies with national, regional, and international partners and in global venues including UN assemblies, G20 events, and the World Economic Forum. During his tenure, Shenggen launched Compact 2025, an initiative that brings stakeholders together to set priorities and share lessons to accelerate progress toward eliminating hunger and undernutrition by 2025. Under his leadership, IFPRI grew considerably and established strategy support programs in many African and Asian countries. Through these programs, global researchers work closely together to improve countries’ decision-making capacity in the areas of food security and nutrition improvement.
Shenggen’s leadership skills have been demonstrated not just at IFPRI, but on this global stage as well. These are just a few of his many accolades. He was appointed by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to serve on the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement Lead Group and was chair of the Global Future Council on the Future of Food Security and Agriculture of the World Economic Forum. He was awarded the Hunger Hero Award by the World Food Programme in 2014 in recognition of his remarkable contributions to the global community. He has served in the Council of Advisors of the World Food Prize since 2018.
*CHPAMS is deeply saddened by our loss of Dr. Teh-Wei Hu, professor emeritus of health economics at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, who passed away on February 3, 2020. He was a long-standing member of the CHPAMS Advisory Board and served in the Reviewing Committee of our highest honor – CHPAMS Inspiration Award from the beginning. In memory of Dr. Hu’s substantial legacy to all of us and in celebration of his extraordinary life, CHPAMS Board of Directors (2018-2020) voted unanimously to name the highest honor awarded by our Society as the Teh-Wei Hu Inspiration Award, starting from the 2020 CHPAMS award nomination cycle.
