Dr. Karen DeSalvo is an associate professor of medicine at the Tulane School of Medicine and has adjunct appointments in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in the both the departments of health systems management and epidemiology. She is the section chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics and holds the C. Thorpe Ray Chair Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine and is vice dean of community affairs and health policy.

Dr. DeSalvo joined the Tulane department of medicine faculty in 1996, serving as director of the Medicine Clinic at Charity Hospital and assistant chief of the Tulane Medicine Service. She is founder and co-director of the Center for Health Equality Research and has authored a number of articles and has been quoted widely on primary care and public health issues.

She received a BA in biology and political science from Suffolk University in Boston. She received both her MD and MPH at Tulane University Health Sciences Center and completed her residency at Tulane, attaining the level of chief resident in internal medicine, and completed a fellowship in general internal medicine at Tulane University Health Sciences Center. She was a fellow in the Program in Clinical Effectiveness at Harvard University, where she also received a master's degree in clinical epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. In July 2002, she was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Generalist Physician Faculty Scholar and was a recipient of the institutional K12 faculty development award from the National Institutes of Health.