Joan Kaufman

Joan Kaufman, MA, M.S., Sc.D is the incoming Director of the Columbia Global Centers | East Asia. Most recently, she has been a Lecturer in Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Principal and Faculty Affiliate of the Hauser Center for Non Profit Management at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Distinguished Scientist and Senior Lecturer at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where she has been teaching on health policy.

From 2008-2011, she was the Associate Director for Academics for the Masters in Science program in International Health Policy and Management, one of two Sustainable International Development masters degree programs at the Heller School. Dr. Kaufman also worked as the China Team Leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative from 2002-2012. Dr. Kaufman was the first UNFPA international program officer in China in the 1980s and from 1996-2001, she was the Ford Foundation’s Reproductive Health Program Officer for China based in Beijing.

She spent 2001-2002 as a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard and 2005-2006 as a Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellow. In 2002, she founded the AIDS Public Policy Project at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a program which trained government officials in China and Vietnam about the multi-sectoral and governance requirements for an effective HIV/AIDS response.

She holds a doctorate in public health from the Harvard School of Public Health, masters degrees in Asian Studies and Health and Medical Sciences from UC Berkeley, and BA cum laude in Chinese Studies from Trinity College. She has published widely on AIDS, reproductive health, gender, population and international health policy, emerging infectious diseases, and civil society and health with a focus on China.

Source: University Programs and Events Planning Resources, September 2013