Dr. Karen Freund serves as the multiple – PI of the Tufts CTSI Career Development Award with Dr. Lesley Inker and multiple – PI of the Tufts Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Program (BIRCWH) Career Development Award with Dr. Iris Jaffe. Dr. Freund’s research career has focused on women’s health and health equity, with a major focus on mentoring the next generation of translational investigators. She is internationally recognized for her work in patient navigation as an intervention to achieve health equity for under-resourced populations. Dr. Freund is also the Harry and Elsa Jiler Clinical Research Professor at the American Cancer Society.
Through support from the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, Dr. Freund was funded to examine the factors associated with the lack of progression of women and underrepresented women in biomedical careers. She and her colleagues have conducted the only national longitudinal study of medical school faculty. She is a national expert on the development of care coordination models to address health disparities, including patient navigation programs for cancer care.