TIME's 100 'Most Influential People in Health'

TIME broke the "Most Influential People in Health' list into five categories:

• Titans
• Innovators
• Pioneers
• Leaders
• Catalysts

Those listed in the "Titans" category include:

• Mike Doustdar, CEO of Novo Nordisk, for multiplying weight-loss medications
• Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, for championing nurses
• Robert Davis, CEO of Merck, for being an immunotherapy game changer
• Sabin Nsanzimana, Rwanda's minister of health, for stopping a viral outbreak
• David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly, for overseeing some of the most prescribed medications
• Delese Mimi Darko, former head of Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority, for building a unified medicines agency for Africa
• Luciano Moreira, CEO of the World Mosquito Program, for protecting people from mosquito-borne disease
• Jixun Lin, founder of Acon Laboratories, for developing at-home COVID-19 testing
• Jo Feng, president of Hengrui Pharma, for being a growing force in pharma
• Mohamed Muizzu, president of the Maldives, for prioritizing public health
• Daniel O'Day, CEO of Gilead, for advancing the fight against HIV
• Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, for filling funding gaps
• Rosemary Mburu, executive director of NGO WACI Health, for championing African health leadership
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS secretary, for reshaping public health

Those listed in the "Innovators" category include:

• Thierry Diagana, head of global health biomedical research at Novartis, for developing a new treatment for malaria
• Brian Ahmedani, of Henry Ford Health, for preventing suicide with risk assessment
• Brian Bigger, former professor at the University of Manchester and currently a professor at the University of Edinburgh, for developing gene therapy for Hunter syndrome
• Darrell Irvine, co-founder of Elicio Therapeutics, for engineering cancer immunity
• Katherine Stueland, CEO of GeneDx, for catching genetic diseases early
• Martin Fitchet, CEO of Medicine for Malaria Venture, for protecting babies from malaria
• Adam de la Zerda, founder and CEO of Visby Medical, for developing rapid home STI testing
• Constance Lehman, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and founder of Clarity, for scoring breast cancer risk
• Florent Geerts, managing director at Delft Imaging, for monitoring maternal health
• John Evans, CEO of Beam Therapeutics, for realizing gene editing
• Karan Singhal, leader of the health AI team at OpenAI, for bridging health and AI
• Zev Williams, a doctor whose team helped develop an AI-based system that detect and isolates sperm in semen samples to help male infertility
• Zhen Xu, a biomedical engineer and co-founder of HistoSonics, for targeting tumors sans surgery
• Ghyslain Mombo-Ngoma, head of clinical operations at the Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné, for blocking drug-resistant malaria
• Kevin Tracey, president and CEO of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and director of the Laboratory of Biomedical Sciences, for developing an implant for autoimmune disease
• Max Hodak, founder and CEO of Science Corporation, for restoring sight
• Songyang Zhou, founder and head scientist of Pluslife, for developing fast, accurate tests for tuberculosis
• Takanori Takebe, a doctor and biomedical researcher at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, for being a ventilation innovator
• Cindy Eckert, CEO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, for addressing women's sexual desire

Those listed in the "Pioneers" category include:

• Kiran Musunuru, director of the Genetic and Epigenetic Origins of Disease Program at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, director of the Gene Therapy for Inherited Metabolic Disorders Frontier Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, for saving a baby from genetic disease
• Aaron Williams, assistant professor of cardiac surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, for leading a team to make more hearts transplant-ready
• Gideon Lack, professor of pediatric allergy at King's College London, for preventing allergies
• Sarah Tabrizi, of University College London, for developing a Huntington's disease breakthrough
• Waseem Qasim, a professor of cell and gene therapy at University College London, and Alyssa Tapley, a 13-year-old with a form of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, for developing a breakthrough blood cancer therapy
• Claire Tomkins, co-founder of Future Family, for developing IVF insurance for families
• Lynn Kramer, chief clinical officer at Eisai, for advancing Alzheimer's treatments
• David M. Brandman, a neurosurgeon, and Sergey Stavisky, an assistant professor of neurological surgery — both at University of California, Davis — for restoring speech for ALS patients
• Ilaria Villa, CEO of Fondazione Telethon, for developing a new model for rare disease treatments
• Emil Lou, of the University of Minnesota, and Emma Dimery, who was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer, for developing a pioneering immunotherapy cancer treatment
• Joseph Turek, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Duke Health, for developing equipment to reanimate baby-sized hearts
• Kara Egan, CEO and co-founder of Teal Health, for making women's healthcare convenient
• Catherine Wu, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, for pioneering personalized cancer vaccines
• Douglas Melton, co-founder of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, for chasing a cure for Type 1 diabetes
• Goki Ishikawa, soon-to-be president and group CEO of Fujirebio, for developing an easier Alzheimer's diagnosis
• New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), for developing a free childcare for all program
• Robert McFarland, professor of pediatric mitochondrial medicine at Newcastle University, for redefining reproduction
• Nima Nassiri, an assistant clinical professor of urology at the University of California, Los Angeles, for performing the world's first bladder transplant
• Tariro Makadzange, a clinical professor at Stanford University and founder of the Africa Clinical Research Network, for developing an African network for clinical trials

Those listed in the "Leaders" category include:

• Julie Inman Grant, Australia's eSafety Commissioner, for protecting kids from social media's harms
• Josephine Barasa, a community health worker in Kenya, for continuing to care for the most vulnerable following funding cuts to USAID
• Kevin Díaz, president and CEO of Compassion & Choices, for being an end-of-life advocate
• Mehmet Oz, CMS administrator, for defining healthcare coverage
• Nathan White, CEO of Cibolo Health, for strengthening rural hospitals
• Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, for fighting children's health changes
• Loeto Mazhani, who helped start Botswana's Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission program, for protecting babies from HIV
• Manica Balasegaram, executive director of the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership, for bringing new antibiotics to market
• Michael Osterholm, leader of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, for preserving medical expertise
• Nick Allardice, leader of GiveDirectly, for offering a financial lifeline
• Mona Hanna, a pediatrician who launched Rx Kids, for investing in families
• Nabarun Dasgupta, leader of the Opioid Data Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for combatting the street drug crisis
• West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R), for banning food dyes
• Angela Doyinsola Aina, co-founder of Black Mamas Matter Alliance, for advocating for Black mothers
• John Green and Hank Green, brothers who are both novelists and YouTube creators, for supporting maternal survival
• Margaret Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, for helping women across the United States access abortion care
• Victor Bultó, president of Novartis U.S., for pioneering safer radiation
• Anne-Claire Amprou, French ambassador for global health, and Precious Matsoso, former director-general of South Africa's department of health, for drafting the global pandemic agreement
• Matthew P. Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, and Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney, for challenging tech's mental health impact
• Warris Bokhari, co-founder of Claimable, for fighting health insurance denials

Those listed in the "Catalysts" category include:

• Chris Hemsworth, an actor, for prioritizing brain health
• A. Eden Evins, director of the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, for developing vaping addiction treatments for teens
• Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, for helping people parent in the smartphone age
• Laura Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon, for personalizing breast cancer screening
• Marty Makary, FDA commissioner, for shaping Americans' access to drugs and vaccines
• Priti Bandi, scientific director of cancer risk factors and screening surveillance at the American Cancer Society, for tracking cancer screenings
• Sadiya Khan, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern Medicine, for assessing cardiovascular risk early
• Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist, for helping understand cancer
• Calley Means, a senior adviser in HHS, for being a diet ideator
• Daniel Coleman, co-creator and star of the YouTube channel Danny Go!, for getting kids moving
• Jesse Eisenberg, an actor, for donating a kidney to a stranger
• Nathan Fielder, a comedian, for whose show The Rehearsal helped push the Mental Health in Aviation Act forward
• Pascal Geldsetzer, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University, for preventing dementia
• Ryan Hampton, founder of Mobilize Recovery, for being an addiction victim advocate
• Kerry Burnight, a gerontologist, for embracing aging
• Eric Dane, an actor, for advocating for an ALS cure
• Ian Kunkler, a doctor who led a study finding that women with early-stage breast cancer who skipped radiation treatment after getting a mastectomy were just as likely to survive to 10 years as women who received radiation
• Joe Sachs, executive producer and writer of the HBO Max series The Pitt, for broadcasting ED issues
• Mikhail Varshavski, a family medicine physician with Chatham Family Medicine, for explaining health data on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok
• Susan Monarez, former CDC director who was fired in August 2025, for being a steadfast leader

Advisory Board's leadership-related resources

• The executive's field guide to disruptive innovation
• Lessons from the C-Suite resource library
• The executive's role in fostering resilient, adaptive leaders
• Enterprise-wide leadership: 2 ways to foster a culture of collaboration and risk-taking
• Radio Advisory episode: What navigating complexity can tell us about leadership
• The next evolution of leadership: Q&A with Matt Cornner, Advisory Board Leadership Development expert