Biography

Masafumi Funato is a family physician and a public health practitioner. After completing a residency training program, he served as the only doctor on the northernmost island(Iheya island) in Okinawa, where he was involved in a wide range of public health activities including health promotion, infectious disease control, and the establishment of a comprehensive community care system.

He also worked as a technical officer for the International Medical Cooperation Bureau of the National Center for Global Health and Medicine, where he supported the international deployment of medical technology and local project management in Southeast Asia.

He received his medical degree (M.D.) from Nagasaki University and earned MPH (Global Health) from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. While in graduate school, he worked in the PPP (Public-Private Partnership) office of Takeda Pharmaceutical in Boston, where he was in charge of monitoring and evaluation systems for global public-private partnership projects. He is currently working at a management consulting firm.