Felicia Marie Knaul is Director of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas and Professor at the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami. She is also Senior Economist at the Mexican Health Foundation and Founding President of Tómatelo a Pecho, a Mexico-based NGO that promotes research, advocacy, awareness, and early detection of women's health issues in Latin America, and has lectured globally on the challenge of breast cancer in LMICs, both as patient-advocate and health systems researcher.
Knaul has approximately 250 academic and health policy publications and her research focuses on global health, cancer care and control (particularly women’s and pediatric cancers), women and health, health systems and reform, health financing, access to pain relief and palliative care, poverty and inequity, gender equity, female labor force participation, and children in especially difficult circumstances.
Dr. Knaul has created and coordinated many international research and advocacy networks. She currently chairs the Lancet Commission on Gender-based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People. From 2014-2017, she founded and chaired the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief.
She has held senior federal government positions at the Ministries of Education and Social Development of Mexico and the Colombian Department of Planning and worked on health reform and social development in both countries. Dr. Knaul also worked as a consultant and advisor for bilateral and multilateral agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank.
Knaul received her BA in International Development from the University of Toronto and MA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
