Jeffrey Markuns, MD, EdM
Executive Director – Boston University Global Health Collaborative
jmarkuns@bu.edu
Dr. Markuns is a practicing urban family doctor dedicated to caring for the underserved of Boston, and the Deputy Director of the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PCPHI), a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Bank Group, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization with Ariadne Labs and Results for Development (R4D) as technical partners. As Executive Director of the Boston University Global Health Collaborative, he has led successful long-term Family Medicine development programs over the last decade to promote primary health care system strengthening throughout southeast Asia and in Lesotho in southern Africa, working towards national-level scale-up of horizontally and vertically-integrated primary care service delivery models.
Dr. Markuns has led the BU GHC in pursuit of true global health equity and the new U.N Sustainable Development goal of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages by seeking a quality primary care provider for everyone. At PHCPI, Dr. Markuns helps to lead PHCPI’s Secretariat in promoting the use of data and measurement to support further improvements in primary health care, particularly in low and middle-income countries. Dr. Markuns has also supported the Vietnam Family Medicine Development Program for more than a decade, one of the largest and most successful international Family Medicine development projects in the world, working on national-level scale-up of a horizontally and vertically-oriented primary care model. Dr. Markuns has led similar programs in Laos and Cambodia, and has more recently been working intensively in Myanmar to support the General Practice Society and the Myanmar Academy of Family Physicians in their health system improvement efforts to enhance primary care capacity at the grassroots level.
Dr. Markuns has led numerous workshops around the world focused on medical education and primary care systems development, and he has developed and organized countless fellowships to Boston University for visiting professionals ranging from practicing specialist physicians to health system administrators to government policy-makers, including Ministers of Health. Dr. Markuns is currently also the founding Director for a new online Masters of Science in Health Sciences Education degree being offered at BU, with a special interest in supporting applicants from low and middle-income countries.
With broad clinical skills in the full spectrum of Family Medicine clinical services, formal fellowship training in medical education, and almost a decade of experience as an assistant program director in postgraduate training in Family Medicine at Boston’s leading academic center committed to the underserved in Boston Medical Center, Dr. Markuns has developed a deep understanding of primary health care and the human resource capacity-building necessary to support its success. Dr. Markuns has served as a consultant in various aspects of both general medical education and primary care in Cambodia, Korea, Laos, Myanmar, Oman, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Jeff is the Chair of the Advisory Board to the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Center for Global Health Initiatives, has authored several articles and textbook chapters in primary care and global health, and was lead author in the revision of the chapter on Education and Professional Development in the Wonca (World Organization of Family Doctors) guidebook, The Contribution of Family Medicine to Improving Health Systems, 2nd Ed as well as co-author on a recent Technical Series monograph by the World Health Organization Safer Primary Care: Educating the Workforce.
