Paul Farmer, MD, PhD
Founding Director of Partners In Health to be the Keynote Speaker - 11 am in Leffler Chapel
Elizabethtown College is pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Farmer, recognized humanitarian and a founding director of Partners in Health, as the keynote speaker for Scholarship and Creative Arts Day 2009. Highlighting Elizabethtown’s annual celebration of student scholarship, Dr. Farmer will offer an address, titled "Rethinking Health and Human Rights," on Tuesday, April 21, at 11 a.m. in Leffler Chapel and Performance Center.
Dr. Farmer, a medical anthropologist and physician, is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and associate chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass. In his position as Partners in Health director, he provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. His work draws primarily on active clinical practice and focuses on diseases that disproportionately afflict the poor. Dr. Farmer has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis.
Author or co-author of more than 100 scholarly publications, Dr. Farmer has written extensively about health and human rights and about the role of social inequalities in determining the distribution and outcomes of infectious diseases. He is the recipient of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Award for Humanitarian Contributions to the Health of Humankind from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the Salk Institute Medal for Health and Humanity, the Duke University Humanitarian Award, the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the American Medical Association’s Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award, the Heinz Humanitarian Award, and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “genius award” in recognition of his work.
Dr. Farmer earned his bachelor’s degree in 1982 from Duke University and his medical degree and doctorate in anthropology simultaneously in 1990 from Harvard University.
To learn more about Dr. Farmer and his work, check out the link below to a May 2008 report done by CBS 60 Minutes. CBS 60 Minutes video about Paul Farmer
More information about Partner's in Health can be found on their website and by visiting their Health and Social Justice Video Network
PRESS RELEASE about Dr. Farmer's visit to Elizabethtown
