Bio Sketch (English):
Felicia Marie Knaul. (Economics, Harvard University), BA (International Development, University of Toronto), has dedicated her career of over three decades to translational research, advocacy and policy work in global health, social development and higher education, focused on reducing inequities and improving the condition of vulnerable groups, primarily in low and middle-income countries, and particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) she is Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine; Senior Advisor to the Dean and to the President of UCLA Health; Director of Global Health and Member of the Cancer Control and Survivorship Research Program, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, holds joint appointments at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Wen School of Nursing and the Fielding School of Public Health (in process) and serves as Associate of the Chancellor. At the University of Miami, from 2015 to 2025 she served as Director of the Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas and director of the Office of Hemispheric and Global Affairs. She held academic appointment as Full Professor at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, and was cross-appointed at the School of Nursing and Health Studies, the Miami Herbert Business School, and the College of Arts and Sciences. Dr Knaul was also a Full Member of the Cancer Control Program at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. From 2009 to 2015, she was Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative, an inter-faculty program hosted at the office of the Provost and chaired by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.
She maintains a strong advocacy and research base in Mexico. She is Distinguished Visiting Professor in Public Health at the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and holds a Member of the Faculty of Excellence initiative role in one of Mexico’s leading universities, the Tecnológico de Monterrey and holds the position of visiting Senior Economist at the Mexican Health Foundation where she has collaborated since 1993. She has also served as Honorary Research Professor of Medical Sciences at the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico.
In 2008, driven by her personal experience with breast cancer, Dr. Knaul founded Cáncer de Mama: Tómatelo a Pecho, A.C. a Mexican non-profit agency that has promoted research, advocacy, awareness, and early detection of breast cancer. She has served as President since its inception. Her work situates breast cancer within the broader continuum of women’s health, highlighting intersections with reproductive health, maternal health, and health-system responses to women’s needs across the life course. She lectures globally on the challenge of cancer, both as a patient advocate and as a health systems researcher. She published her memoir Tómatelo a Pecho (Grupo Santillana, 2009) and Beauty without the Breast (Harvard University Press/ Harvard Global Equity Initiative 2013) to support women living with breast cancer. Her story and her work have been featured in Science, Cancer Today, Miami ABC 10, the Miami Herald, The Lancet, WHO Bulletin, and Newsweek en Español. In 2019, Tómatelo a Pecho expanded its mandate to promote women’s health broadly, including research and advocacy focused on mitigating violence against women, as a public health and reproductive health priority.
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. She has led and participated in several global policy reports, including the World Health Report 2000, and directed the production of various papers for the government of Mexico on education, health and children’s rights. While working for the Minister of Education of Mexico she designed and implemented an evidence-based national, inter-institutional program Sigamos Aprendiendo en el Hospital (Let’s Keep Learning in the Hospital), which catalyzed the placement of officially recognized schools in tertiary hospitals throughout the country. As the founder and director of the program, she organized an inter-institutional, multi-disciplinary group of researchers, government leaders, advocates and donors. To achieve its goals, this group collaborated with the First Lady and the ministers of health and education. This work produced research publications documenting both the design and the initial results of the program. She also chaired a multi-sectorial, inter-institutional working group and lead authored the Programa Nacional de Acción en favor de la Infancia 2002-2010 (the National Action Program for Children), the blueprint for the Mexican response to the Special 2012 Session of the United Nations. Working in a voluntary capacity with the Ministry of Health from 2000 to 2006, she led much of the analysis on financing and health spending that translated into the design of the Seguro Popular.
Her research focuses on global health, poverty and inequity, violence against women and children, cancer (particularly breast cancer), access to pain relief and palliative care, health systems and reform, health financing, women´s and reproductive health, medical employment, female labor force participation, and at-risk children and youth.
Dr. Knaul has produced over 355 academic and policy publications (h-index: 48; over 12,611 citations). Notable among them is The Lancet Commission report: “Alleviating the access abyss in palliative care and pain relief – an imperative of universal health coverage,” for which she was a lead author. Dubbed a “landmark report” by The Lancet, the research was featured in the BBC, the Washington Post, Project Syndicate, The Guardian, and Voice of America and has spawned an array of research papers, new data collection initiatives, and advocacy and policy work. The novel methodology to measure the need for palliative care and paid relief has been officially adopted by the International Narcotics Control Board to assess country performance.
Her work on women´s health spans breast cancer, reproductive health, maternal health across the life course and employment in the health sector. From 2012-2015, she was a member of The Lancet Commission on Women and Health and a leading co-author of its June 2015 report, contributing new measures of the economic value of women´s contributions to health and health care that were incorporated into global policymaking by the World Health Organization. This Commission has also spawned a stream of research initiatives, and she leads an international group of scholars refining the estimates of gender differentials in paid and unpaid contributions to health and caregiving. Her recent publications includes as senior author on an invited submission to Nature Medicine for the Series on women’s health throughout the life course published in 2025. She also served as a leading commissioner and played a major role in the economic research published in The Lancet Commission on Breast Cancer published in April 2024.
She has authored and served as lead editor of several books and special issues of journals, including Closing the Cancer Divide (Harvard University Press/Harvard Global Equity Initiative 2012), Financing Health in Latin America: Household Spending and Impoverishment (Harvard University Press/Harvard Global Equity Initiative 2013), Caleidoscopio de la Salud. De la Investigación a las Políticas y de las Políticas a la Acción, Inclusión educativa para niños, niñas y jóvenes hospitalizados (Fondo de Cultura Económica e Intersistemas 2006), and Salud Pública de México, Edición Especial sobre Cáncer de Mama 2009.
In 2023 she was the lead author on the third in a series of health policy papers in The Lancet on Mexico’s health system covering both the dismantling of the 2003 health reform (Seguro Popular) and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper follows on the 2012 review of Seguro Popular and The Lancet’s 2006 Mexico series, which she also chaired. Her work on Seguro Popular and financial protection in Mexico won the 2005 Global Development Network Prize for Outstanding Research on Change in the Health Sector.
Dr. Knaul maintains a strong and synergistic global program of research and translation of research into policymaking and contributes to an array of research networks and organizations that promote and disseminate evidence. She currently Co-Chairs The Lancet Commission on Cancer and Health Systems and The Lancet Commission on Violence against Women and Children. From 2014-2017, she founded and co-chaired (with Dr. Paul Farmer) The Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief. Initiated in 2021, this work has now spawned a highly productive global research hub under her leadership. She founded and directed the Harvard Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control that transformed research and advocacy around cancer as a global health priority and spawned several Lancet Commissions and the Global Task Force on Radiotherapy for Cancer Control. In 2020 and 2021 she brought together and led a group of researchers from eight Latin American countries to collect and analyze data on COVID-19 and sub-national policymaking. This resulted in multiple group-science papers and new health systems research. Dr. Knaul also coordinated the Global Network for Health Equity, an initiative that brought together researchers from Latin America, in association with the Asia EQUITAP network and the Africa SHIELD network with funding from IDRC Canada.
She currently serves as Commissioner on The Lancet Oncology Commission on Cancer in the Commonwealth and The Lancet Respiratory Medicine Commission on Palliative Care Integration in Serious Respiratory Illness, and of the The Lancet Commission on Health Systems Performance Assessment, as well as on the international advisory board of The Lancet Global Health and The Lancet Regional Health – Americas. She also served on The Lancet Commission on Investing in Health 3.0 published in 2024 and The Lancet Commission on the Value of Death published in 2022.
She sits on the boards of several not-for-profits including the Geffen Academy Advisory Council, UCLA Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, and Esperanza United. She also previously served on the boards of the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care, Kristi House and the Union for International Cancer Control. She has worked with bilateral and multilateral agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Bank and has participated in several global policy reports.
Based on her research accomplishments, Dr. Knaul was made a member of the Mexican National Academy of Medicine in 2017, one of the first economists to be admitted. She was also inducted into the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2020 and made an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2021. In 2018, she was awarded Senior Level III of the Mexican National System of Researchers.
She has received several recognitions for her work. In 2025, she was named among the 100 most influential people in Oncology in 2025 by OncoDaily. In 2024, was inducted into the International Women’s Forum of Florida and in 2025 also to the Southern California chapter. She was named “Local Hero” by the American Medical Women’s Association in 2016, and one of Mexico’s most influential women in 2013. She was awarded “Flama, Vida y Mujer” by the Autonomous University of the State of Nuevo Leon, and the Global Health Catalyst Award by students at Harvard University. She also received the Philanthropy Award from Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden.
Her other activities include dressage riding with her horse Posey, walks with her dogs Petunia and Shimmy, swimming, jogging, crochet and art and kaleidoscope collecting. Dr. Knaul is a citizen of Canada and the United Kingdom, and a permanent resident of Mexico. She and her husband, Dr. Julio Frenk, Chancellor of UCLA, have two children, Sofia Hannah and Mariana Havivah. Her brother, Jonathan Knaul, is a retired Major of the Canadian Armed Forces with multiple tours of duty and is now a test pilot based in Los Angeles, California.
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