Paul Farmer | |
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Born | Paul Edward Farmer October 26, 1959 |
Died | February 21, 2022 62) Butaro, Rwanda | (aged
Education | Duke University (BA) Harvard University (MD, PhD) |
Spouse | Wingdie Didi Bertrand Farmer (m. 1996) |
Children | 3 |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | Harvard University |
Website |
Part of a series on |
Medical and psychological anthropology |
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Social and cultural anthropology |
Paul Edward Farmer (October 26, 1959 – February 21, 2022) was an American medical anthropologist and physician. Farmer held an MD and PhD from Harvard University, where he was a University Professor and the chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was the co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. He was professor of medicine and chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and abroad. Their work is documented in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization , The Lancet , The New England Journal of Medicine , Clinical Infectious Diseases , the British Medical Journal , and Social Science and Medicine .
Farmer wrote extensively on Health and Human Rights, the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, and global health. Farmer pioneered the concept of community health works and decentralized models of care. [1]
He was known as "the man who would cure the world", as described in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Farmer and Partners in Health received the Peace Abbey Foundation Courage of Conscience Award in 2007 for saving lives by providing free health care to people in the world’s poorest communities and working to improve health care systems globally. The story of PIH is also told in the 2017 documentary Bending the Arc . He was a proponent of liberation theology. [2] [3]
On April 24, 2021, Farmer was named Aurora Humanitarian in recognition of his work with PIH. [4]
Farmer was born in North Adams, Massachusetts, and raised in Weeki Wachee, Florida. He had first lived in Alabama for some of his childhood years. [5] Then when his family moved to Florida, Farmer and his family of eight lived in an old school bus that his father had transformed into a mobile home. Farmer recounted his father as a “free spirit,” as he later on pursued commercial fishing and took his family to live with him on a houseboat in the Gulf of Mexico. Farmer’s father then anchored the houseboat in a primitive bayou called Jenkins Creek where the family bathed, bringing jugs with drinking water from Brooksville. Farmer prioritized his education and excelled academically in school. Farmer’s parents often read serious literature to their children, motivating them to learn as much as possible in regard to all that the world had to offer. The family dealt with financial difficulties that often led them to work in different environments. One summer, Farmer’s family worked with Haitian migrant workers and picked citrus fruit, which was Farmer's first encounter of many with Haitian people. [6]
He was the brother of former professional wrestler Jeff Farmer. He was a graduate of Hernando High School in Brooksville, Florida, where he was elected president of his senior class. [7] He attended Duke University as a Benjamin N. Duke Scholar, [8] graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in medical anthropology in 1982. [7] [9] During his time at Duke, he went to Paris for half a year and learned French fluently which benefited him in his future work. He then came across the work of Rudolf Virchow, the 19th century German physician and scientist that developed public health medicine, who inspired Farmer's career trajectory. Farmer’s passions were further shaped by the political atmosphere around him at the time with civil war and revolution breaking out in Central America (including the Nicaraguan Revolution, Salvadoran Civil War, and Guatemalan Civil War), and the rise of liberation theology which the Catholic clergy used to defy authoritarianism in the region. This ideology emphasized the “preferential option for the poor,” which consisted of the physical and spiritual wellbeing of the poor as a crucial component of the word of God. To some followers of Christianity, part of “liberation theology" that Christians need to focus on as their primary obligation involves helping the least fortunate of those around them. [6]
Farmer later became involved with migrant labor camps near campus, and came into contact with Sister Juliana DeWolf. She was working with the United Farm Workers, seeking to ameliorate the living circumstances of the laborers harvesting tobacco. Through this encounter, Farmer befriended many of the Haitian farm workers, and listened to their life experiences and stories. He became interested in Haiti and began learning Creole, interviewing Haitian migrant workers, and reading about Haiti's history. [6] In 1983, while still in school, he started working with villages in Haiti's Central Plateau to help incorporate modern health care practices in their communities. [10] He ended up writing and co-writing more than 100 scholarly papers and several books. [10]
After graduating from Duke, Farmer began volunteering at a hospital in Cange, Haiti. [11] Subsequently, he attended Harvard University, earning an MD and a PhD in medical anthropology in 1990, [9] returning to Haiti multiple times during medical school to continue his work in Cange. [11] He completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1993 and an infectious disease fellowship in 1996. [12] Farmer was board certified in internal medicine and infectious disease. [12]
In 1987, Farmer, along with his colleagues from Harvard Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, Thomas J. White and Todd McCormack, co-founded Partners In Health. [13] [5] PIH began in Cange in the Central Plateau of Haiti and at the time of Farmer's death in February 2022 operated 16 sites across the country, with approximately 7,000 employees. [11] PIH in Cange was known as Zanmi Lasante, the sister organization of PIH. Zanmi Lasante built schools, homes, and communal sanitation and water systems to help the community in central Haiti have improved facilities and resources. The organization vaccinated all of the local children while successfully decreasing malnutrition and infant mortality rates in the area. Zanmi Lasante also focused on AIDS prevention during the HIV crisis and successfully decreased HIV transmission rates to 4% from mothers to babies. [14]
In 1999, the World Health Organization designated Farmer and a fellow PIH worker Jim Yong Kim to facilitate global multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) treatment programs, ensuring successful deliveries of antibiotics. With the help of a $44.7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Farmer created specific drug-therapy initiatives for individuals in Haiti, Peru, and Russia. [15] With this program having some of the highest cure rates in the world, it was clear that treating MDR TB could be done cost effectively in poor countries with functional delivery systems. [5] [15]
Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais opened in 2013 and provides tertiary care to patients, including oncology and trauma surgery services. [11] [13] Partners In Health also works in Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Russia, and the Navajo Nation. The University of Global Health Equity is an initiative of Partners In Health that started in 2015 and focused on delivering the highest quality of health care by addressing the critical social and systemic forces causing inequities and inefficiencies in health care delivery. [16]
In 2003, author Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World was published. The book describes Farmer's work in Haiti, Peru, and Russia. [17]
In May 2009, Farmer was named Chair of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, succeeding Jim Yong Kim, his longtime friend and colleague. On December 17, 2010, Harvard University's President, Drew Gilpin Faust, and the President and Fellows of Harvard College, named Farmer as a University Professor, the highest honor that the University can bestow on one of its faculty members. [18]
In August 2009, Farmer was named United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti (serving under former U.S. President Bill Clinton), in his capacity as Special Envoy. [19]
In December 2012, Farmer was appointed the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti. [20]
In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Farmer worked with PIH to develop a contact-tracing program in Massachusetts. [15]
Farmer was editor-in-chief of Health and Human Rights . He was on the board of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy and was a co-founder and board member of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. [21] He was on the Board of PIVOT, a recently formed healthcare and research organization operating in Madagascar. He was a member of the Advisory Board of Incentives for Global Health, the NGO focused on developing the Health Impact Fund. He also served on the Global Advisory Council of GlobeMed, a student-driven global health organization that works through a partnership model. [22]
Farmer served on the Advisory Board of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, an international student-driven advocacy organization that works on issues of medicine development and affordability. [23] Farmer was a board member of Kageno Worldwide, Inc., a community development agency that has worked in Kenya and Rwanda. He was also on the Board of Trustees for EqualHealth, which builds critical consciousness towards health equity. [24]
Farmer was married to Didi Bertrand Farmer, a Haitian medical anthropologist and community health specialist who has led several initiatives at Partners in Health. Her most recent work focuses on empowering girls and young women in Haiti and Rwanda. [25] They had three children. [26] Farmer was Catholic. [27]
In February 2022, Farmer was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter to The Harvard Crimson defending Professor John Comaroff, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies. [28] After students filed a lawsuit with detailed allegations of Comaroff's actions and the university's failure to respond, Farmer was one of several signatories to say that he wished to retract his signature. [29] [30]
Farmer died in his sleep from an acute cardiac event in Butaro, Rwanda, on February 21, 2022, at the age of 62. [11] [31] Farmer had been involved in medical education at Butaro District Hospital and the Butaro campus of the University of Global Health Equity, which accepted its first class of medical students in 2019. [32]
Farmer was the recipient of numerous honors, including the Bronislaw Malinowski Award and the Margaret Mead Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award from the American Medical Association, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and, with his Partners In Health colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, from which he was awarded the 2018 Public Welfare Medal. In 2020, he was awarded the million-dollar Berggruen Prize. [34] [35] [36]
Vanessa Bradford Kerry is an American physician, public health expert, and advocate. She is a founder of the non-profit Seed Global Health, director of the Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and serves as the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Health for the World Health Organization (WHO).
James Jude Orbinski is a Canadian physician, humanitarian activist, author, and scholar in global health. Dr. Orbinski began his role as principal of Massey College at the University of Toronto in the 2024-2025 academic year, where he is also Full Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, and is cross-appointed to the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, as well as the Dalla Lana School of Public Health,. Previously a professor in the Faculty of Health Science at York University, Dr. Orbinski founded the Dahdaleh Institute of Global Health Research.
Arthur Michael Kleinman is an American psychiatrist, social anthropologist and a professor of medical anthropology, psychiatry and global health and social medicine at Harvard University.
Partners In Health (PIH) is an international nonprofit public health organization founded in 1987 by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, Thomas J. White, Todd McCormack, and Jim Yong Kim.
Jim Yong Kim, also known as Kim Yong (김용/金墉), is an American physician and anthropologist who served as the 12th president of the World Bank from 2012 to 2019.
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World (2003) is a non-fiction, biographical work by American writer Tracy Kidder. The book traces the life of physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer with particular focus on his work fighting tuberculosis in Haiti, Peru and Russia.
Ophelia Magdalena Dahl is a British-American social justice and health care advocate. Dahl co-founded Partners In Health (PIH), a Boston, Massachusetts-based non-profit health care organization dedicated to providing a "preferential option for the poor." She served as executive director for 16 years and has since chaired its board of directors.
Zanmi Lasante is a sister organization to the Boston-based Partners In Health that operates out of Cange in the central plateau of Haiti. The name, Zanmi Lasante, means Partners In Health in Haitian Creole. It was built in 1985 to treat patients who were incapable of paying hospital fees. Services cost the equivalent of about eighty American cents for everyone "except for women and children, the destitute, and anyone who was seriously ill." Additionally, no one may be turned away.
Harvey Vernon Fineberg is an American physician. A noted researcher in the fields of health policy and medical decision making, his past research has focused on the process of policy development and implementation, assessment of medical technology, evaluation and use of vaccines, and dissemination of medical innovations. Fineberg has held several prominent positions over the course of his career, including Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, Provost of Harvard University, and President of the Institute of Medicine, now the National Academy of Medicine.
Joia Stapleton Mukherjee is an associate professor with the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Since 2000, she has served as the Chief Medical Officer of Partners In Health, an international medical non-profit founded by Paul Farmer, Ophelia Dahl, and Jim Kim. She trained in Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine, and Pediatrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mukherjee has been involved in health care access and human rights issues since 1989, and she consults for the World Health Organization on the treatment of HIV and MDR-TB in developing countries. Her scholarly work focuses on the human rights aspect of HIV treatment and on the implementation of complex health interventions in resource-poor settings.
Deficient sanitation systems, poor nutrition, and inadequate health services have pushed Haiti to the bottom of the World Bank's rankings of health indicators. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, 80 percent of Haiti's population lives below the poverty line. In fact, 75% of the Haitian population lives off of $2.50 per day. Consequently, malnutrition is a significant problem. Half the population can be categorized as "food insecure," and half of all Haitian children are undersized as a result of malnutrition. Less than half the population has access to clean drinking water, a rate that compares poorly even with other less-developed nations. Haiti's healthy life expectancy at birth is 63 years. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that only 43 percent of the target population receives the recommended immunizations.
Denis Mukwege is a Congolese gynecologist and Pentecostal pastor. He founded and works in Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where he specializes in the treatment of women who have been raped by armed rebels. In 2018, Mukwege and Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist Nadia Murad were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict".
The Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries (GTF.CCC) is a research and advisory initiative directed by the Harvard Global Equity Initiative, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington and the University of Washington Medicine to address the global burden of cancer in developing countries. This initiative, originally convened in 2009 by four Harvard-based institutions including the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, comprises a network of more than thirty leaders in the fields of cancer and global health from around the world. GTF.CCC also draws on more than 50 technical and strategic advisors, a private sector engagement group, a strategic advisory committee, and a dual secretariat of staff based at the Harvard Global Equity Initiative and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Agnes Binagwaho is a Rwandan Politician, pediatrician, co-founder and the former vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity (2017-2022). In 1996, she returned to Rwanda where she provided clinical care in the public sector as well as held many positions including the position of Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health of Rwanda from October 2008 until May 2011 and Minister of Health from May 2011 until July 2016. She has been a professor of global health delivery practice since 2016 and a professor of pediatrics since 2017 at the University of Global Health Equity. She has served the health sector in various high-level government positions. She resides in Kigali.
Loune Viaud is Executive Director of Zanmi Lasante, Partners in Health’s sister organization in Haiti. She won the 2002 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for her work with the group to provide health care in Haiti, and in 2003 was named one of Ms. magazine's "Women of the Year".
University of Global Health Equity (UGHE) is a health sciences university in Rwanda. An initiative of Partners In Health, UGHE is a private, not-for-profit, accredited institution.
Bending the Arc is a 2017 documentary film. It tells the story of Partners in Health and doctors and humanitarians, Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, and Paul Farmer, who are devoted to innovative health care in impoverished nations. Directors Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos follow their ongoing struggle to treat and eradicate tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in rural areas of Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda.
Louise Catherine Ivers is an Irish-American infectious disease specialist. She is the executive director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. During the 2010s Haiti cholera outbreak, Ivers led a major humanitarian and public health response, resulting in increased access to HIV and TB treatment, and served as a technical advisor to the World Health Organization.
Michelle Evelyn Morse is an American internist. She is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-founded EqualHealth and Social Medicine Consortium. She is currently the interim Commissioner of Health for the City of New York.
Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of the medical charity Partners in Health, speaks on the opening night of the Summit.