Clarisza Runtung

Clarisza Runtung

2026 Impact Fellow


Clarisza Runtung is an emergency nurse from Indonesia who is currently pursuing her MPH in Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focuses on the intersection of climate change, migration, and primary health care, with ongoing research in Jakarta using GIS, demographic methods, and institutional mapping to understand how environmental shocks reshape health-system resilience. She brings a breadth of experience working alongside underserved populations facing environmental and social stress: supporting families in the Zaatari Camp in Jordan as they navigated early childhood development and access to care, working with communities in Madagascar to understand and track the pressures of illegal logging, and partnering with villages in Indonesia to strengthen community health while protecting forests in biodiversity-critical landscapes. Her path also includes early policy experience at the World Health Organization and a background in theatre directing, which she draws on to integrate narrative methods that center community voices and inform policy design. Clarisza seeks to strengthen primary health care access and disaster preparedness in regions most affected by climate change.