Huang Yanzhong is senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directs the Global Health Governance Roundtable Series and the Universal Health Coverage Roundtable Series. He is also a Professor and director for global health studies at the school of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he developed the first academic concentration among U.S. professional schools of international affairs that explicitly addresses the security and foreign policy aspects of health issues. He is the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm.

He was a research associate of the National Asia Research Program, a Public intellectuals fellow of the National Committee onU.S.-China Relations, an associate fellow of Asia Society, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has taught at Barnard College and Columbia University. He obtained his BA and MA degrees from Fudan University and PhD degree from the University of Chicago.