Paul Farmer

This article is about the physician. For the former British educationalist, now local councillor, see Paul S. Farmer.

Paul Farmer
Farmer in 2003
Born	(1959-10-26) October 26, 1959 North Adams, Massachusetts
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Duke University (BA) Harvard University (MD, PhD)
Awards	Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize MacArthur Genius Grant Public Welfare Medal Heinz Award in the Human Condition
Scientific career
Fields	Internal Medicine Infectious Disease Medical Anthropology
Institutions	Harvard University
Website	pih.org ghsm.hms.harvard.edu/person/faculty/paul-farmer www.lessonsfromhaiti.org

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Major theorists Gregory Bateson Maurice Bloch Charles L. Briggs Veena Das George Devereux Cora DuBois Paul Farmer Michael M. J. Fischer Arthur Kleinman Charles Laughlin E. Thomas Lawson Robert I. Levy Ralph Linton Tanya Luhrmann Marvin Opler Michelle Rosaldo Nancy Scheper-Hughes Richard Shweder Merrill Singer Dan Sperber Melford Spiro Beatrice Whiting John Whiting
Journals Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry Ethos Medical Anthropology Quarterly Transcultural Psychiatry Journal of Cognition and Culture Anthropology of Consciousness
Social and cultural anthropology

Paul Edward Farmer (born October 26, 1959) is an American medical anthropologist and physician. Farmer holds an MD and PhD 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, Farmer serves as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.

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 Partners In Health colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He is 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.

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.

Farmer has written extensively on health and human rights, the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, and global health.

He is known as "the man who would cure the world," as described in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. The story of Partners In Health is also told in the 2017 documentary Bending the Arc.

Personal life and education

Farmer was born in North Adams, Massachusetts and raised in Weeki Wachee, Florida. His brother is former professional wrestler Jeff Farmer. He is a graduate of Hernando High School in Brooksville, Florida, where he was elected president of his senior class. He attended Duke University as a Benjamin N. Duke Scholar, graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in medical anthropology in 1982. He attended Harvard University, earning an MD and a PhD in medical anthropology in 1990. He completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1993 and an infectious disease fellowship in 1996.

International work

In 1987, Farmer, along with Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl, Thomas J. White and Todd McCormack, co-founded Partners In Health. PIH began in Cange in the Central Plateau of Haiti and currently works in 12 sites across the country. Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais provides tertiary care to patients. Partners In Health also works in Rwanda, Lesotho, Malawi, Mexico, Peru, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Russia, and Navajo Nation. The University of Global Health Equity is an initiative of Partners In Health 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.

In 2003, the author Tracy Kidder wrote Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, which describes Farmer's work in Haiti, Peru, and Russia.

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. In 2012, Kim was appointed President of the World Bank. 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.

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.

In December 2012, Farmer was appointed as the United Nations Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.

Farmer is board certified in internal medicine and infectious disease.

Farmer is Editor-in-Chief of Health and Human Rights Journal. Farmer is on the board of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy; he is a co-founder and Board Member of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. He is on the Board of PIVOT, a recently formed healthcare and research organization operating in Madagascar. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Incentives for Global Health, the NGO focused on developing the Health Impact Fund. He also serves on the Global Advisory Council of GlobeMed, a student-driven global health organization that works through a partnership model. Farmer also serves 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. Farmer is a board member of Kageno Worldwide, Inc., a community development agency that has worked in Kenya and Rwanda.

Books

• AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, 1993, 2006 edition: ISBN 978-0-520-08343-1
• The Uses of Haiti, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994, 2003, 2005 edition: ISBN 978-1-56751-242-7
• Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, revised 2001 edition: ISBN 978-0-520-22913-6
• Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 2005 edition: ISBN 978-0-520-24326-2
• Global Health in Times of Violence, co-edited with Barbara Rylko-Bauer and Linda Whiteford, School for Advanced Research Press, 2009 edition: ISBN 978-1-934691-14-4
• Women, Poverty & AIDS: Sex, Drugs and Structural Violence (Series in Health and Social Justice), with coauthor Margaret Connors, Common Courage Press; Reprint edition (September 1996), ISBN 978-1-56751-074-4
• Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader. Ed. Haun Saussy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0520257139
• Haiti After the Earthquake, Ed. Abbey Gardner and Cassia van der Hoof Holstein. PublicAffairs, July 12, 2011, ISBN 978-1-58648-973-1
• To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation. Ed. Jonathan Weigel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0520275973
• In the Company of the Poor: conversations between Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez. Ed. Michael Griffin and Jennie Weiss Block. Orbis Books, 2013: ISBN 978-1626980501
• Reimagining Global Health. Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, Arthur Kleinman, and Matthew Basilico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. ISBN 978-0520271999
• Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. Paul Farmer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. ISBN 978-0374234324

Awards and recognition

• 1993: MacArthur Fellowship
• 1999: Margaret Mead Award, American Anthropological Association and Society for Applied Anthropology, for “Infections and Inequalities”
• 2002: Outstanding International Physician Award (Nathan Davis Award), American Medical Association
• 2005: Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize (awarded to Partners In Health)
• 2005: Rudolf Virchow Award, Professional Prize (with Dr. Arachu Castro), Society for Medical Anthropology
• 2006: Union Medal, Union Theological Seminary
• 2010: S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
• 2011: named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.
• 2011: Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, University of South Florida
• 2015: Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award For Social Entrepreneurship
• 2018: Public Welfare Medal, National Academy of Sciences
• 2018: Elected to the American Philosophical Society

Bibliography

• "Paul Edward Farmer, MD, PhD". Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.