Joan Kaufman 

Biography

Joan Kaufman is the founding Director of the AIDS Public Policy Training Program at the Center for Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, a program which trains officials in China and Vietnam about the governance requirements for an effective AIDS response. She is also a Senior Scientist at the Schneider Institute for Health Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management and Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is the China Team Leader for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. She was the Ford Foundation's Gender and Reproductive Health Program Officer for China from 1996-2001 where her portfolio funded government, researchers and NGOs in efforts to reform China's population policy and family planning program, to mobilize a response to the AIDS epidemic, and to promote attention to gender and reproductive health in rural health reform.    After leaving China she spent the 2001-2002 academic year as a Radcliffe fellow at Harvard University where she began work on a book on the impact of the Beijing Women's Conference on the globalization of the Chinese women's movement. She was a Lecturer on Population and Reproductive Health at Harvard School of Public Health from 1990 -1999 and Senior Associate at Abt Associates Inc. from 1992-1996, developing and directing projects on HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases and other public health problems. She was the first international UNFPA program officer for China from 1980-84. She holds a doctorate in population and international health from Harvard School of Public Health. She has consulted to many private foundations, to government, and to public and private organizations on reproductive health issues and has published widely on reproductive health, AIDS, gender and international health topics.

Research Interest

Clinical Sciences.