2009 INTERNATIONAL HERO
Paul Farmer, M.D., Ph.D.
For his dedication to treating some of the world’s most impoverished populations and raising the standard of health care in poor areas of the world
Medical anthropologist and physician Dr. Paul Farmer, is Maude and Lillian Presley Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a founding director of Partners In Health, an international nonprofit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer’s work draws primarily on active clinical practice and focuses on community-based treatment strategies for diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor, health and human rights, and about the role of social inequalities in determining the distribution and outcomes of infectious diseases.
Dr. Farmer is an attending physician in infectious diseases and associate chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and served for ten years as medical director of a charity hospital, L’Hôpital Bon Sauveur, in rural Haiti. Along with his colleagues at BWH, in the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School, and in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Malawi, Dr. Farmer has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for AIDS and tuberculosis (including multidrug-resistant tuberculosis). Dr. Farmer and his colleagues have successfully challenged the policymakers and critics who claim that quality health care is impossible to deliver in resource-poor settings.
Award Presenter
Congresswoman Barbara Lee was first elected to represent California's 9th Congressional District in 1998. Her accomplishments in promoting effective, bipartisan legislation to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS have earned her international recognition as a leader. She has authored or coauthored every major piece of legislation dealing with global AIDS issues since she was elected to Congress, and she is a coauthor of legislation recently enacted that reauthorizes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and U.S. global tuberculosis and malaria programs.
The Challenge: Fighting the Epidemics of Poverty and Disease
People in poor regions of the world are still battling diseases that have long since been eradicated or contained in developed nations. In countries like Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda, when someone contacts tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, or pneumonia, they often have no access to any treatment at all. It is both a moral and medical imperative to treat these patients who are most in need. Partners In Health’s success has helped prove that allegedly “untreatable” health problems can be addressed effectively, even in poor settings.
As well as working to provide access to medical care, alleviating some of the conditions of poverty can go a long way towards improving health. Achieving good health outcomes requires attending to peoples’ social and economic needs, including access to food, shelter, clean water, sanitation, education, and economic opportunities.
The School of Public Health Responds
- Lee Riley, professor of epidemiology and infectious diseases, is an expert on diseases of neglected populations, such as tuberculosis and drug-resistant gram-negative bacterial infections. Professor Riley spends at least one month out of every year working to improve health in the urban slums of Brazil.
- The School has more centers and research programs funded by the Fogarty International Center—the international component of NIH that addresses global health challenges through collaborative research—than any other school of public health. They include the International Training and Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Global Center for Health Economics and Policy Research.
- Professor Arthur Reingold, associate dean of research and head of the Epidemiology Division, has worked on addressing AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and acute respiratory infections in Brazil, Uganda, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, India and Indonesia. He has directed the NIH Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program at UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco since its inception in 1988. He also serves as principal investigator of the UC Berkeley Center for Infectious Disease and Emergency Readiness.
- The newly formed Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability is dedicated to developing innovations in reproductive health for resource-poor settings. Research at the center specifically focuses on activities in developing countries that can be levers of change, while paying close attention to cost-effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability. The center assists in the implementation of maternal health programs and seeks to improve the heath outcomes of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable women and their families.
