Joia Stapleton Mukherjee (born 1964) is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the

Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts Gener ...

and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of

Partners In Health Partners In Health (PIH) is an international nonprofit public health organization founded in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Thomas J. White, Todd McCormack, and Jim Yong Kim. Partners in Health provides healthcare in the poorest areas of ...

, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from

Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first ...

. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and human rights issues since 1989, and she consults for the World Health Organization on the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in developing countries. Her scholarly work focuses on the human rights aspect of HIV treatment and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.

Personal life

Joia Mukherjee was raised in

Huntington, New York The Town of Huntington is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York. Founded in 1653, it is located on the north shore of Long Island in northwestern Suffolk County, with Long Island Sound to its north and Nassau County adjacent to the west. ...

. As the daughter of an Indian father and American mother, she found herself exposed to issues of global poverty and

social injustice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...

, at a young age. In 1972, at the age of eight, she traveled to India where she found herself outraged by squalid conditions of poverty. Mukherjee's passion to combat poverty and injustice continued throughout her early years and was fostered through action and academic pursuit. Having served populations of the world's poorest and witnessed first-hand the global injustices that plague so many, Mukherjee finds much needed motivation and enjoyment in singing, cooking, and spending time with loved ones.

Education

Joia Mukherjee completed her undergraduate degree in 1985 in Chemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, Ann Arbor. In 1992, Mukherjee graduated from Medical School at the

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

. She began her

Residency Residency may refer to: * Domicile (law), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place ** Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship * Residency (medicine), a stage of postgrad ...

in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis and interrupted her residency to work on HIV prevention in rural Uganda. She completed her residency at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

in Boston where she remained to pursue a fellowship in Infectious Disease. In 2001, Mukherjee completed a Masters of Public Health in Quantitative Methods at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Work

Dr. Mukherjee holds Faculty Academic Appointments at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Since 2000, Dr. Mukherjee has served as the Chief Medical Officer for

. She also holds the roles of Director of the Program in Global Medical Education and Social Medicine and the Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery Program at Harvard Medical School. Mukherjee is the Chair of the board of directors of the

Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) is a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, US, that seeks to accompany the people of Haiti in their nonviolent struggle for the consolidation of constitutional democracy, ju ...

and has also served as an Executive Board Member for

Physicians for Human Rights Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a US-based not-for-profit human rights NGO that uses medicine and science to document and advocate against mass atrocities and severe human rights violations around the world. PHR headquarters are in New ...

, Health Action AIDS Campaign; a consultant for the Harvard Medical School Vietnam-CDC-Harvard AIDS Partnership; and as a member of the board of directors of Village Health Works, Last Mile Health, and Project Muso. Mukherjee served on several local, national, and international committees, such as the World Health Organization Green Light Committee on the Treatment of Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis, the Infectious Disease Society of America Committee on International Infectious Diseases, and the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...

Technical Reference Group (TRG) on Pediatric HIV Care and Treatment]. In addition to holding membership in the Infectious Disease Society of America, the American Public Health Association, and the

International AIDS Society The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world's largest association of HIV/AIDS professionals, with 11,600 members from over 170 countries , including clinicians, people living with HIV, service providers, policy makers and others. It aims to ...

, Dr. Mukherjee is a Fellow of the

American Academy of Pediatrics The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an American professional association of pediatricians, headquartered in Itasca, Illinois. It maintains its Department of Federal Affairs office in Washington, D.C. Background The Academy was founded ...

. Dr. Mukherjee is the author of An Introduction to Global Health Delivery, a textbook from Oxford University Press (2017).

Awards

Dr. Joia Mukherjee has been honored for her work in the fields of academia, global healthcare, and community service through several important honors and awards. In 2006, Dr. Mukherjee was recognized by Heifer International as Hero of Humanity for her outstanding service. A handful of other awards include honorary degrees from the

University of Rhode Island The University of Rhode Island (URI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Kingston, Rhode Island, United States. It is the flagship public research as well as the land-grant university of the state of Rhode Island ...

, Ripon College, Muhlenberg College, and

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

, the Marshall Wolf Award in Medical Education from the Brigham and Women's Hospital Division of Global Health Equity, and the Drapkin Award for Humanism in Medicine from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

References

External links

Partners in Health

PIH Symposium 2010

CBS News Report on Cholera

GlobeMed Summit 2011

Reducing Maternal Mortality-PIH

PIH Symposium 2011

Social Medicine Symposium 2016

"Health's Mission to Deliver Hope for the Poorest of the Poor" University of Rhode Island Honors Colloquium 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mukherjee, Joia American public health doctors Women public health doctors Living people University of Michigan alumni Michigan State University alumni University of Minnesota Medical School alumni Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni Harvard Medical School faculty 1964 births