"We desperately need all of you on the TEAM for CHANGE"

"This is not an easy time to join the profession or further your studies in health care," PIH's Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee told the graduating class of the Massachusetts General Hospital Insitute of Health Professions on May 10. "The landscape here in the U.S. and abroad is mired in a fight about who should fund health care and how much it should cost and who should have access."

“The lack of access, in my view, is about the silos we have created — between rich and poor, black and white, nurses and doctors, patients and providers," Dr. Mukherjee continued. "What is needed to break these silos and to bring the best of our collective strength, competencies, and passion is a movement for health as a basic human right.” 

Dr. Mukherjee urged the 400 graduates and the more than 2,000 family and friends who packed the Hynes Convention Center in Boston to dedicate themselves to building that movement. 

“We despearately need all of you on the TEAM for CHANGE," she said. "My greatest hope is that you realize and act on the weight of your responsibility as one of the privileged few with a degree in higher education — whether it is in nursing, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, or medical imaging — to liberate yourself from conventional wisdom and liberate others from suffering.”

Watch video of Dr. Mukherjee's keynote address. (the speech starts at 29:01)
Read Dr. Mukherjee's address in its entirety.