MUDr. Martin Jan Stránský, MD, FACP

Martin Jan Stransky was born in 1956 in New York city and is the son of Jan Stransky, co-founder of the Czechoslovak desk of Radio Free Europe. Martin's grandfather was Jaroslav Stransky, Czechoslovak Minister of Justice and then Education in the years 1946 to 1948, who also published Lidové noviny, Přítomnost, and seventeen other well-known periodicals of interwar Czechoslovakia. Martin's great-grandfather was Adolf Stransky, founder of Lidové noviny (the oldest daily newspaper in the country) and Czechoslovakia's first Minister of Commerce under Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.
After receiving his medical degree in 1983 and subsequent Board Certification in both Internal Medicine and Neurology, Dr. Stransky began practicing neurology and teaching at Yale University as Assistant Clinical Professor in Neurology, which he continues to do today. In addition to lecturing overseas in Grenada and in other countries two weeks per year, Dr. Stransky spends about fifteen weeks per year in the US teaching and practicing neurology.
As a result of the events that took place in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Dr. Stransky now spends the majority of his time in Prague. He is the founder and director of the Yale University-Charles University Neuroscience Exchange Program, as well as of the Prague Selective program (www.pragueselective.com/), which has sent over 500 US medical students to Prague. He is also the founder and Director of the Polyclinic at Národní (www.poliklinikanarodni.cz), a twenty-five physician multi-specialty clinic in Prague. Dr. Stransky serves as panel physician to both the US and British embassies in Prague and also lectures at Charles University Medical School in Prague. Furthermore, he is an advisor in medicine within the office of the Czech president and to numerous committees and ministers.
In keeping with the family's publishing tradition, Dr. Stransky is the founder of the M.J.Stransky Foundation Fund, which serves to promote journalism, provide journalism internships for budding journalists, and which also publishes the magazines Přítomnost and The New Presence along with their internet versions (www.pritomnost.cz, www.new-presence.com). These quarterly magazines, which are distributed and read throughout the world, present a Central European point of view in the areas of politics, culture, economy, and arts and literature. As a result of these accomplishments, Dr. Stransky was the sole recipient of the 1996 Award for Outstanding Cultural Achievement given by the Masaryk Academy of the Czech Academy of Arts and Sciences. Aside from the M.J.Stransky Foundation Fund, Dr. Stransky is also the founder of the Prague Press Club (www.praguepressclub.cz), whose members meet regularly in Prague.
Like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, Dr. Stransky is active in civic affairs. For example, he served in the Program Committee of the annual Forum 2000 (www.forum2000.cz) meetings in Prague, which he also moderato, and was the Administrative Director for the citizens‘ movement "Impuls 99". In promoting relations with Czechs around the world, Dr. Stransky serves as a permanent consultative member on the Senate Commission for Overseas Czechs. Finally, Dr. Stransky is the founder and director of the Stransky Foundation Fund (Nadace Stránský - www.nfstransky.cz), whose mission is to promote legal reform and citizens‘ rights pertaining to the state and state institutions. The other mission of the Foundation is to provide internship and practical education for law students. Members of the Foundation's Board include former justices of the Supreme Court as well as prominent legal attornies and educators.
In 2010 Dr. Stransky as "shadow" Minister of Health participated as a key figure in drafting the government's healthcare program. Later that year, Dr. Stransky was elected as an independent candidate to the Prague 1 Assembly and subsequently elected by his peers as Head of the Prague 1 Healthcare Coucil. Based on this, Dr. Stransky is the first case in modern Czech history in which a single family served the free Czechoslovak /Czech Republic state for four generations in a row in public office.
Because of his background and vast experiences, Dr. Stransky is a frequent speaker in the Czech Republic and in Europe. He speaks to numerous public and private organizations about civil society, democracy in the Czech Republic, journalism, European-American relations, and medicine and health care systems. Aside from being a frequent speaker, Dr. Stransky has published social, political, and cultural commentaries in virtually every Czech paper. Such commentaries are regularly featured on the radio as well. Furthermore, he has published the book Czechs Don't Want Democracy (Millenium press) and has also been the subject of print, radio, and TV interviews as well as two television documentaries.