On My Side 2022 Honoree
The Champion of the Year Award recognizes a single advocate who goes above and beyond to provide pro bono services to survivors. We are delighted to present this award to Dr. Nick Cuneo in recognition of his invaluable work providing trafficking survivors seeking immigration relief with access to trauma-informed, culturally appropriate forensic evaluations and health care. Nick, a board-certified pediatrician and adult internist, cofounded the HEAL Refugee Health & Asylum Collaborative to provide forensic medical evaluations and access to health care for survivors that are both culturally and linguistically appropriate. Forensic evaluations can often mean the difference between a grant of a T-visa or a denial for a trafficking survivor. Nick’s work brings together skilled health care providers with the ability to communicate with survivors in their own language. Survivors who would normally face bills in the thousands of dollars for these services are able to access them pro bono, thanks to Nick and his innovative program at the HEAL Refugee Health & Asylum Collaborative.
About the Honoree
C. Nicholas Cuneo M.D., M.P.H., is a board-certified pediatrician and adult internist who has a background in refugee health, asylum medicine, and global health education. As an assistant professor in pediatrics and medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, he works clinically as an attending physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and holds a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he is affiliated with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights and the Center for Humanitarian Health.
With expertise in the physical and psychological evaluation of survivors of torture and trauma, Dr. Cuneo serves as co-lead for the national Asylum Medicine Training Initiative and as Chair of the Anti-Trafficking Initiative for the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He is principal investigator for a medical-legal partnership with the International Refugee Assistance Project in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and is the founding medical director of the HEAL Refugee Health and Asylum Collaborative, which provides trauma-informed, affirming care and supportive services to immigrant survivors of torture, trauma, and trafficking, including Baltimore’s first comprehensive pro bono asylum clinic.
Dr. Cuneo is a graduate of the Harvard Brigham & Women’s Hospital/Boston Children’s Hospital Medicine-Pediatric Residency and served as chief resident for the Doris and Howard Hiatt Residency in Global Health Equity at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He earned his B.S. in biology and anthropology at Duke University, his M.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and his M.P.H. in clinical effectiveness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Cuneo has extensive global health research and program management experience, particularly in Haiti, where he was a Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellow, and South Africa, where he was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Public Health.