Nahreen H. Ahmed, MD, MPH
Scholar
- Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care | University of Pennsylvania
- Bangladesh | Yemen | Palestine, State of | Sudan
- Critical care | Humanitarian assistance | Humanitarian Crises | Humanitarian Emergencies | Humanitarian Response | Point of Care Ultrasound | Radiology | Technology in Low Resource Settings
Languages: English (native), Bengali (proficient)
Bio statement
Dr. Nahreen Ahmed is originally from the Greater Philadelphia area, she attended Drexel University College of Medicine and attended residency at UIC, Chicago where she concomitantly completed her MPH and a Chief year. She completed fellowship in Pulmonary/Critical care at NYU/Bellevue which is where she launched her Global Health Career by founding the Bangladesh Ultrasound Initiative, a training program for critical care physicians in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This program has now successfully trained over 150 physicians in bedside ultrasound and has become self-sustaining.
She joined the faculty at Penn in 2017 and is currently an Assistant Professor in Clinical Medicine as well as a Penn Center for Global Health Scholar and a co-founder of the Philadelphia Area Critical Care Ultrasound Program which is the first of its kind in the area, wherein all 7 city hospitals were brought together to train incoming Critical Care fellows in Point-of-Care Ultrasound and has been ongoing since its inception in 2018. Since that time she has participated in a critical care training program in Ethiopia with the East African Training Initiative and has gone on to design and implement training programs for healthcare workers in crisis and conflict zones such as Yemen, Gaza, Syria, Sierra Leone, Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh, at the border of Columbia and Venezuela and in Ukraine through a non-profit organization called MedGlobal.
For seven years across various roles at MedGlobal she supported response efforts across the globe including in the role of Medical Director during which she led emergency response efforts in the wake of both natural disasters as well as war and conflict. She has worked in active war zones such as Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and Gaza and is well versed in navigating the complexities of conflict and fragile contexts and working alongside of local organizations, coordinating bodies and iNGOs, to ensure access to healthcare for the most vulnerable.
In addition she has collaborated with members of the Penn Global Emergency Medicine Program to help initiate a Certification Program in Emergency Medicine in Dhaka Bangladesh and has volunteered with the Indian Health Services in Navajo nation for three separate missions to aide in their Covid response and their vaccination efforts. She continues her Clinical services at Penn and also currently works with the Gates foundation as a Technical Advisor for implementation of Health Innovation in Fragile contexts.
Dr. Ahmed has a strong belief in capacity building and empowering local clinicians and health care systems as a way to decrease health inequities across the globe.
Recent global health projects
Implementation of clinical bundle of innovations to improve the neonatal and maternal mortality rate in Yemen: I have worked as a technical advisor for the Gates foundation in collaboration with the NGO, IMC, to provide technical support during the implementation of a large bundle of health and clinical innovative strategies in an extremely fragile context. This has included several field visits and working with the Yemeni doctors and data team to create a sustainable strategy with the implementation of cpap, ultrasound and PPH drape to name a few.
Medical Capacity building in Gaza’s fractured healthcare system: This included several deployments into Gaza in both the North and South focusing on training and capacity building in the Emergency Room and ICU at two of the major referral systems in Gaza.
Selected publications
Afreen R, Surya SL, Jara T, et al. Enhancing mental health literacy and care through community-driven solutions in rural Bangladesh. Front Glob Womens Health. 2024;5:1478817. Published 2024 Dec 12. doi:10.3389/fgwh.2024.1478817
Jesse Raiten, MD, Nahreen Ahmed, MD, Ashish Amyata, MD, Apurb Sharma, MD, Subhash Acharya, MD, Jill Lanahan, MD, Hazel Werlhof, MD, Hanjo Annie Ko, MD, Cindy Tsui, MD, Tariq Reza, MD, Smriti Bajracharya, MD, Ove Hagen, MD, Gentle Shrestha, MD: Perioperative Point-of-Care Ultrasound and Transesophageal Echocardiography in Resource-Limited Settings—A Focus on Nepal and Bangladesh. Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia 34(10): 2604-2610, Oct 2020.
Michelle Lee MDCM, Illana Greenwald MD, Emma Sczudio, Isabel Fulcher MPH, Andrew Nangoli, Nahreen Ahmed MD, Gabriela Leon, William Cherniak MD : "Diagnosing Pediatric Pneumonia using a Novel Cloud-Enabled Point-of-Care ultrasound training program for Mid-Level Providers in Rural Uganda" American Public Health Association 2019.
Ahmed NH, Mukherjee V, Rouf A, Hanif A: Implications of a Needs-Assessment in a Public Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh. American Thoracic Society May 2017 Notes: Poster presentation.
Ahmed N, Mukherjee V, Rouf A, Hanif A : Using A Community Needs Assessment in Resource-Limited Settings as A Guide to Quality Improvement Society of Critical Care Medicine 2017 Notes: Poster presentation.
Last Updated: 27 July 2026