Regional President:
WONCA North America 2021-2023

Dr Jeff Markuns (USA)

Dr. Markuns is a family doctor dedicated to caring for the underserved of Boston, and Executive Director of the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI), a partnership led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Fund, UNICEF, the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization together with Ariadne Labs and Results for Development (R4D) as technical partners. As Executive Director of the Global Health Collaborative in the Department of Family Medicine at Boston University, Dr. Markuns has also led successful long-term Family Medicine development programs to promote primary health care system strengthening throughout southeast Asia and supported similar work 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 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 leads 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 pursuing national-level scale up of a horizontally and vertically-oriented primary care model. Dr. Markuns has led similar programs in Laos and Cambodia, as well as with the Myanmar Academy of Family Physicians in their health system improvement efforts to enhance primary care capacity at the grassroots level.

Having completed a fellowship in medical education himself, Dr. Markuns is also Director of Boston University’s Masters program in Health Professions Education, and has been a long time member of the WONCA Working Party on Education. He has delivered 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.

With two decades of experience practicing the full spectrum of Family Medicine clinical services at Boston Medical Center - Boston’s leading academic center committed to the underserved - coupled with academic experience in local and global health professions education and primary health care development, Dr. Markuns has developed a deep understanding of primary health care and the systems and human resource capacity-building necessary to support its success. As the WONCA Regional President for North America, Dr. Markuns is excited to be partnering with regional family medicine organizations to better promote primary health care and Family Medicine both throughout the region and around the world.