Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer, medical anthropologist and physician, has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world's poorest people. Dr. Farmer holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he is the Kolokotrones University Professor and the Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is 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 is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Additionally, Dr. Farmer serves as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.

Dr. Farmer is 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 PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and other countries. Their work is documented in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Clinical Infectious Diseases, British Medical Journal, and Social Science and Medicine.

Dr. Farmer also has written extensively on health and human rights, about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, and about global health. His most recent books are In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez and Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. Other titles include To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation, Haiti After the Earthquake, Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, The Uses of Haiti, and AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. In addition, Dr. Farmer is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS: Sex, Drugs and Structural Violence, The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, and Global Health in Times of Violence.