A Wisconsin resident since 1983, Cynthia Haq, MD, has served as a champion for health equity, primary health care, community health and family medicine throughout her career. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Haq is a professor of family medicine and has enjoyed caring for patients in rural Belleville, Madison, and Milwaukee. She loves teaching, has led educational programs for the Department of Family Medicine, has designed and implemented patient-centered communication curricula and leads socially accountable medical education programs to prepare health professionals to work with medically underserved communities. In Milwaukee, she established the Training in Urban Medicine and Public Health (TRIUMPH) program to prepare UW medical students to become physician leaders to care for medically underserved urban populations.
As the Founding director of the UW Center for Global Health, Haq has promoted global health in Wisconsin and abroad. She served as a visiting professor to strengthen health professional education and to establish family medicine training programs at Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan; at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. She worked with the World Health Organization and World Organization of Family Doctors to co-author the book Improving Health Systems: the Contribution of Family Medicine (2002), which encourages development of health systems built on a strong foundation of community-based primary health care. She collaborated with UW colleagues to establish the Center for Global Health to catalyze global health education, field programs, research, and partnerships in low-resource settings.
