Unni Karunakara, former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)/Doctors Without Borders and currently a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale, will deliver the commencement address Monday at the 2016 Yale School of Public Health graduation.
Karunakara has been a humanitarian worker and a public health professional for two decades with extensive experience in the delivery of health care to neglected populations affected by conflict, disasters and epidemics in Africa, Asia and the Americas. He was medical director of the MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines (2005-2007) and later its international president (2010-2013).
He currently serves on the board of directors of Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative in India and MSF in Holland. In 2001, he helped found Vivo, an organization that works to overcome and prevent traumatic stress and its consequences.
“It is a great honor to be invited back to Yale, where I studied public health, and to speak to the new generation of public health professionals as they set out to change the world,” said Karunakara, an alumnus of the school.
Karunakara has held academic and research fellowships at universities in Africa and Europe. His research is focused on the demography of forced migration and the delivery of health care to neglected populations affected by conflict, disasters and epidemics.
He also has served as the deputy director of Health of the Earth Institute, Millennium Villages Project, and assistant clinical professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. He is currently a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute, which brings leaders in international affairs to Yale to teach and mentor students in areas vital to modern society, and a visiting professor at Kasturba Medical College at Manipal University in India.
It is a great honor to be invited back to Yale, where I studied public health, and to speak to the new generation of public health professionals as they set out to change the world.
Unni Karunakara
Karunakara earned his medical degree from Mangalore University in India, an M.P.H. from Yale in 1995 and a doctorate in public health from Johns Hopkins. At Yale, he teaches a module in Gateway to Global Affairs as well as seminars on complex emergencies, and moral and ethical dilemmas in humanitarian action.
MSF was founded in 1971 and is an international medical humanitarian organization that provides aid to people in crisis around the world. In 2014, MSF had a presence in 63 countries, providing more than 8 million consultations.
Last year’s graduation speaker was Sir Michael Marmot, recipient of the C.-E. A Winslow Award, the school’s highest honor. Marmot has led research on health inequalities for 35 years and is an internationally recognized scholar on how such disparities influence health outcomes. He was knighted in 2000.
The school’s graduation ceremony begins at 2:30 p.m. in Battell Chapel on 400 College St. in New Haven.