Richard A. Cash


Richard Alan Cash, M.D., M.P.H. is an American global health researcher, public health physician, and internist. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. 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 in Dhaka, East Pakistan. While there, he and his colleagues developed and conducted the first clinical trials of oral rehydration therapy 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, 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 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 as an additional substrate. In the late 1970s, Cash worked with BRAC on their OTEP ], which taught over 13 million mothers and caregivers how to prepare and use ORT in the home using the "pinch and scoop" method.
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 could treat cholera and other diarrheal diseases, then by promoting in the developing world customized applications of oral rehydration therapy developed by Cash and David R. Nalin, Cash, David Nalin, and Dilip Mahalanabis became joint recipients of the 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 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.

Contributions to ethics

Cash has lectured internationally and authored or co-authored a number of published papers on research ethics and teaches a Harvard course and had long directed a summer intensive workshop on those issues. He won continued NIH funding for a series of that touch on over a dozen issues listed on . The use of case method teaching has been a critical element of all his courses. Many of the currently-used ethics case studies, the course outlines, many readings, and other course materials . After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Cash served with the Russian Academy of Sciences project on development of bioethics capacity in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Contributions to public health

Richard A. Cash explored contrasts within and between nations in health research ethics as a PI of a training grant from the National Institutes of Health on "Ethical Issues in International Health Research" at HSPH. For eleven years, as Director of the and in line with his deep commitment to capacity building in growing nations, he has conducted training workshops based on this research in at , and in 18 nations in South America, Africa, India, and the Middle East, covering issues of informed consent, confidentiality, conflict of interest, investigator responsibilities to study populations, research in resource poor environments, and the development of ethical review committees. He has also overseen the training of 20 Fellows from Asia, and he has conducted over 30 workshops on research ethics in 12 nations.

Accolades

Dr. Richard A. Cash has published over 120 peer-reviewed academic papers, spanning his work over 50 years. Some highlights include: