Carolina Batista MD is a global health leader and equity advocate with 2 decades of experience in the field. As a physician she has worked on the frontlines of some of the most complex and neglected health challenges in the world, tackling infectious diseases in conflict settings, among refugees and other humanitarian contexts in Africa and Latin America. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Batista has been involved in the global response in various capacities, including leading Doctors Without Borders Navajo Nation response in the USA, supporting local responses among Indigenous communities in her home country Brazil, as well as joining the COVID-19 Lancet Commission. She has published various papers on peer-review journals about the impact of the pandemic in vulnerable communities, the urgency for equitable access to medical tools and care and bringing her valuable perspective on health equity based on her hands-on experience with underserved populations. As the head of global health at Baraka Impact Finance, she supports social entrepreneurs who are developing and scaling up innovative solutions to address unmet health needs, improve health-seeking behavior, health education, and enhancing healthcare delivery to populations in LMICs. She has held leadership positions at international medical organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi).
She has been actively involved in several global health challenges and initiatives that aim to foster innovation and collaboration for public health. She served as a jury member for the 2022 MIT SOLVE Challenge and on 2023 she was a jury for the Grand Challenges Senegal and supported its vision to enable the next set of breakthroughs in research, discovery and translational life science in Africa. She also serves on the board of several prestigious global health organizations and initiatives, such as The Lancet Migration Latin America, DNDi Access Committee, Movement Health Foundation, the International Society of NTDs, and The Lancet COVID-19 Commission.
She has a medical degree from Brazil and a master’s degree in international public health from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.