Dr. Karen M. Freund is the Physician-in-Chief at Tufts Medical Center, and the Sheldon M Wolff Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.
Dr. Freund earned her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed residency training at Cambridge Health Alliance/ Harvard Medical School (internal medicine) and Boston University Medical Center (preventive medicine), followed by a general internal medicine fellowship at Boston University Medical Center. She holds an AB from Harvard College, and an MPH from Boston University.
Dr. Freund’s research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over 30 years, resulting in more than 180 publications. Her research focus is disease prevention and chronic disease management for women and under-resourced populations. She is currently principal investigator of a five-year NIH grant to eliminate breast cancer treatment disparities across the city of Boston through a regional collaboration of medical centers focused on patient navigation and social determinants of health. Her previous funding has included the development of patient navigation programs, and investigation of the impact of insurance reform on chronic disease outcomes.
Dr. Freund also studies the career trajectories of women and faculty underrepresented in medicine and science. She is a passionate mentor of early-career faculty as principal investigator of NIH-sponsored career development awards including Tufts’ Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Program (along with Iris Jaffe MD PhD) and the KL2 Clinical Translational Career Development Program. Dr. Freund is a recipient of Tufts Medical Center’s BJ Magnani Leadership Award, the American Cancer Society - Harry and Elsa Jiler Clinical Research Professorship and was the Society of General Internal Medicine’s 2013 Distinguished Professor in Women’s Health.