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Richard A. Cash Scientist

Richard Alan Cash, M.D., M.P.H. (born 1941) is an American global health researcher, public health physician, internist, and Prince Mahidol Award / Medal winner. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Health and Director of the Program on Ethical Issues in International Health in the Department of Global Health & Population of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. Prior to joining HSPH full-time, he was a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development (previously HIID, now CID) and part-time at HSPH. He is gifted at figuring out how to show others how to do much with very little.Cash began his international career over 40 years ago when he was assigned by NIAID of the NIH to the Pakistan-SEATO Cholera Research Laboratory (CRL) in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now the ICDDR,B in Dhaka, Bangladesh). While there, he and his colleagues developed and conducted the first clinical trials of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) in adult and pediatric cholera patients and patients with other infectious causes of diarrhea. This technology matches the volume of fluid losses from dehydration patients with the volume they consume so that the fluid replacement packets greatly reduce or completely replace IV therapy (particularly where it is not feasible or unavailable), which was then the only current treatment for cholera. Discoveries in ORT have been estimated to have saved over 50 million lives worldwide. World Health Organization (WHO) estimates are that at least 60 million children have been spared painful deaths because of ORT. They also conducted the first field trials of ORT, the first community-based trials of ORT, and the first use of amino acids (glycine) as an additional substrate. In the late 1970s, Cash worked with BRAC (presently the world's largest NGO in terms of programs and personnel) on their OTEP (Oral Therapy Extension Programme), which taught over 13 million mothers and caregivers how to prepare and use ORT in the home using the "pinch and scoop" method.Cash continues to work with BRAC on a number of their health and education projects. After joining Harvard 30 years ago (at HIID and HSPH), he worked on a number of international programs that stressed implementation, training, and capacity building. In particular, the ADDR (Applied Diarrheal Disease Research project) provided over 150 grants to developing country scientists and led to over 300 publications in national and international journals. At HSPH, Cash has taught a wide variety of courses, including Introduction to International Health, the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease of Importance in Developing Countries, Ethical Issues in International Research, and Urban Health Care in Developing Countries. He also leads field-trip courses to Kerala, India, and Bangladesh for HSPH students.At present, he has visiting faculty appointments at the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Sciences Studies in Trivandrum, Kerala, India (teaching in the MPH program for the past nine years) and at the James P. Grant School of Public Health of BRAC University in Dhaka, Bangladesh (a member of the international board of advisors and teaching in the MPH program for three years). Institution/capacity building in developing nations is very much part of his lifelong professional commitment and work.It is estimated by WHO researchers that, each year, around 500 million packs of the oral rehydration solution are used in more than 60 developing countries, saving over 60 million lives around the world. For demonstrating how inexpensive and simple-to-use oral rehydration therapy (ORT) could treat cholera and other diarrheal diseases, then by promoting in the developing world customized applications of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) developed by Cash and David R. Nalin (at Merck in Vaccine Development from 1983 to 2002), Cash, David Nalin, and Dilip Mahalanabis became joint recipients of the 2006 Prince Mahidol Award in public health for "exemplary contributions in the field of public health" and for their contributions "to the application of the oral rehydration solution in the treatment of severe diarrhea worldwide, including Thailand.On November 8, 2011, Cash was presented with the 2011 James F. and Sarah T. Fries Foundation Prize for Improving Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for his leadership in the development and dissemination of Oral Rehydration Therapy as a practical treatment for cholera and other diarrheal diseases that has saved the lives of at least 60 million children worldwide.