Navigating the Road Toward A New Vision of Global Health

2025-2026 Visionary Lecture Series
PRESENTER
Joia Mukherjee, MD
DATE
Thursday November 13, 2025
TIME
8:00-9:30 pm eastern time
FORMAT
Live Online via Zoom

Overview

In this Visionary Lecture, Dr. Mukherjee will discuss the global health and social justice work of Partners In Health, an organization providing interdisciplinary care across 12 countries. Partners in Health recognizes that its work has been most effective when it is rooted in holistic systems of care that support families and communities. This understanding began in the 1990s during the “orphan crisis” caused by the AIDS epidemic across the African continent.  While some groups focused on supporting orphans, Partners In Health shifted the paradigm from vertical or “disease focused” interventions to the provision of holistic care for the entire family—providing HIV treatment to parents as well as building comprehensive health systems to provide prevention and treatment for a multitude of conditions from HIV to maternity care to mental health.  

Dr. Mukherjee will highlight lessons learned from this work and how they were applied during the COVID pandemic when Partners In Health was invited by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to support contact tracing. The group developed an equity-focused model to support the needs of the most vulnerable.
If you can’t make it due to scheduling or time zone differences, don’t worry! A recording will be available for one week after for anyone who signs up.

Joia Mukherjee, MD

Dr. Joia Mukherjee is a physician, educator, and activist, trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and public health. Dr. Mukherjee served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health for 25 years and is currently the Senior Advisor on Clinical and Academic Strategy at PIH an international medical charity with programs in the United States, Haiti, Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Peru, and Kazakhstan. Joia coordinates and supports PIH’s efforts to provide high quality, comprehensive health care to the poorest and most vulnerable. She is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and on the faculty at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. Dr. Mukherjee teaches infectious disease, global health delivery, and human rights to health professionals and students from around the world. Dr. Mukherjee directs the Masters degree program in Global Health Delivery and is the Director and Advisory Dean of the F.W. Peabody Society at Harvard Medical . She is the author of Introduction to Global Health Delivery: Practice, Equity, Human Rights, a textbook published in 2017 by Oxford University Press, second edition 2021. Her scholarship focuses on the health delivery, Universal Health Coverage, and human rights. Joia is a mother and a singer.