Felicia Knaul

Felicia Marie Knaul (BA, University of Toronto; MA, MA, PhD (Economics, Harvard University). At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she is a distinguished professor of medicine and serves as a senior advisor to the dean of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, as well as a senior advisor to the president of UCLA Health.  At the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, she is the inaugural director of global health. She is also the associate of the chancellor.

Her research focuses on health system strengthening, equity and poverty alleviation, cancer control, pain relief and palliative care, women and health, medical employment, female labor force participation, and at-risk children and youth. Knaul currently serves as the co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Cancer and Health Systems and of the Lancet Commission on Violence against Women and Children, and previously chaired the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief. She also currently serves on the Lancet Oncology Commission on Cancer in the Commonwealth and the Lancet Respiratory Medicine Commission on Palliative Care Integration in Serious Respiratory Illness. Previously, Knaul served on the Lancet Breast Cancer Commission, which published its report in 2024. She maintains a strong research and advocacy base in Mexico and has published extensively on the Mexico’s health reform systems, most recently in 2023 in The Lancet. Knaul has produced over 350 academic and policy publications and 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).

In 2008, as a result of her breast cancer experience, Knaul founded Cáncer de Mama: Tómatelo a Pecho, a Mexican non-profit institution founded to promote research, advocacy, and awareness to reduce the burden of breast cancer and has since expanded its mandate to include women’s health broadly. Knaul chronicled her cancer journey, published as Tómatelo a Pecho (Grupo Santillana, 2009) and Beauty without the Breast (Harvard University Press/ Harvard Global Equity Initiative 2013). She lectures globally on the challenge of cancer, both as a patient advocate and as a health systems researcher. 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. 

Knaul sits on the boards of several not-for-profits dedicated to undertaking and disseminating global health research, including Esperanza United and the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care.  She also previously served on the board of the Union for International Cancer Control (2010-2014). 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.