Felicia Knaul

Felicia Marie Knaul is a Canadian health economist who is currently the Associate Chancellor of UCLA. She also holds appointments as a Professor of Medicine at the David Geffan School of Medicine, Professor in the UCLA School of Public Policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, Senior Advisor to the Dean and President of UCLA Health and Director of Global Health at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is an economist with the Mexican Health Foundation and president of the non-governmental organization Tómatelo a Pecho, an advocacy organisation she and Julio Frenk founded, that promotes women's health in Latin America. Her research and leadership has focused around raising awareness of breast cancer in low and middle income countries.

Early life and education Knaul was born and raised in Toronto. Her father is a Holocaust survivor, whose family had been murdered by the Nazis. She said that "the mute cry of the Holocaust was tattooed on my father's forearm". In 1984, Knaul's father died from stomach cancer, an experience that would shape her lifelong commitment to improving access to healthcare. This experience motivated her to improve people's access to healthcare. Knaul was an undergraduate student in the University of Toronto, where she studied international development. During her early career, she worked with street children in Guatemala. She moved to Mexico, where she joined the Mexican Health Foundation and worked with her husband Julio Frenk, then Minister of Health, to establish the Seguro Popular. Seguro Popular was a social insurance system that provided Mexican people with access to health services. In partnership with Frenk, Knaul created school systems in hospitals to educate young people in long-term treatment.

Knaul served as chair of The Lancet commission on improving access to palliative care. It revealed that people in low and middle income countries often struggle to access palliative care, and that millions of adults and children die in considerable pain. She estimated that providing pain relief to suffering children would cost $1 million a year.

After her own experiences of breast cancer, Knaul focused on tackling disparities in access to cancer screening in Mexico. The organisation, Cáncer de Mama: Tómatelo a Pecho's name derives from a Mexican saying ("take it to breast,"), which makes to take it seriously. In 2013, Knaul described her experiences in the book Beauty without the Breast.

In 2009, Knaul joined the faculty at the Harvard Global Equity Initiative, which was chaired by Amartya Sen. She worked to expand access to cancer care around the world, launching the Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care. Within months of arriving, she coordinated an international conference on breast cancer care in low and middle income countries. 2016 American Medical Women's Association Local Hero 2017 Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Philanthropy Award 2020 Autonomous University of Nuevo León Flama, Vida y Mujer 2020 Elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences

Selected publications

Personal life Knaul was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer in 2007. She underwent surgery in Mexico City, and, after a full mastectomy, had fifteen months of chemotherapy.