Jonathan Cohen Oral History Highlights

Jonathan Cohen is Director of Policy Engagement at the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and Clinical Professor for the Division of Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health at the Keck School of Medicine. An internationally renowned expert in health and human rights, Cohen previously served as Director of the Open Society Foundations’ Public Health Program, where he oversaw a $39 million portfolio dedicated to advancing health and rights globally. During his sixteen years with the Foundations, Cohen directed funding and advocacy efforts to promote health and human rights in over 40 countries. In his oral history, Cohen unravels the strategic processes, decisions, and leadership choices that informed how the Public Health Program budget was directed to foment change and fund progress across the areas of harm reduction, palliative care, sex workers’ rights, health systems financing, transgender health, and more. He discusses the pivotal moments in his early career that inspired and sharpened his focus on health and human rights, and contextualizes the groundbreaking investments that the Public Health Program was able to make, subsequently altering the landscape of global health and philanthropy.

About the Project: The Health and Human Rights Oral History Project (HHROHP) is a growing archive of video testimonies from diverse figures in the health and human rights movement. The full archive (including full length video recordings and transcripts) will be available in December 2022 through the University of Southern California Libraries and the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health.