Dr. Matthew Dacso MD
Director of the Charles E. Cheever, Jr. Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, UT Health San Antonio
Dr. Dacso is the Director of the Charles E. Cheever, Jr. Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics and a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. He is a general internal medicine clinician and global health practitioner who has extensive experience forming partnerships that are rooted in relationships, respect, and reciprocity. He has participated in international and domestic capacity-strengthening initiatives in the areas of clinical care, medical education, arts and humanities, One Health, and emerging pathogens research. Through this work, he has sought to develop academic collaborations that improve health and address health inequities both at home and around the world.
In his various roles in educational leadership, he has worked to instill into learners an ethical and humanistic approach to clinical medicine, global and community health, and public health research. He currently leads a collaborative multidisciplinary research initiative in the Dominican Republic focused on characterizing the epidemiology, clinical features, and vector ecology surrounding acute undifferentiated febrile illnesses, specifically centered on emerging and re-emerging arboviral pathogens. As a clinician, he provides care in both outpatient primary care clinics as well as the inpatient service at University Hospital.
Dr. Dacso is a Fellow of the American College Physicians and is an active member of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He has published peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and abstracts in the areas of interprofessional global health education, ethics of global health partnerships, mentorship, and narrative medicine. He has been recognized for humanism in medicine and public health by being named an emeritus Faculty Scholar in the John P. McGovern Academy of Oslerian Medicine at UTMB and as a member of both Alpha Omega Alpha and the Delta Omega Honor Society for Public Health.