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
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, where he was a
University Professor and the chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is cons ...
. 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
Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the tw ...
.
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
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one.
H ...
'', ''
Clinical Infectious Diseases'', the ''
British Medical Journal
''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origi ...
'', 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.
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.
On April 24, 2021, Farmer was awarded the
Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity in recognition of his work with PIH.
Early life and education
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.
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.
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.
He attended
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist Jam ...
as a Benjamin N. Duke Scholar, graduating ''
summa cum laude'' with a Bachelor of Arts in
medical anthropology in 1982.
[Paul Farmer, MD, PhD](_blank)
. ''Harvard University Department of Global Health and Medicine''. Retrieved July 22, 2011. 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
The Nicaraguan Revolution ( es, Revolución Nicaragüense or Revolución Popular Sandinista, link=no) encompassed the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation F ...
,
Salvadoran Civil War
The Salvadoran Civil War ( es, guerra civil de El Salvador) was a twelve year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or ...
, 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.
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.
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.
He ended up writing and co-writing more than 100 scholarly papers and several books.
After graduating from Duke, Farmer began volunteering at a hospital in
Cange, Haiti
Cange is a small remote village in the Mirebalais Arrondissement, in the Centre department of Haiti. Cange is the location of an American funded hospital, Zanmi Lasante, run by Partners in Health. It is accessible by vehicle as it is located di ...
.
Subsequently, he attended
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, earning an MD and a PhD in medical anthropology in 1990,
returning to Haiti multiple times during medical school to continue his work in Cange.
He completed an internal medicine residency at
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and the largest hospital in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the tw ...
in 1993 and an infectious disease fellowship in 1996.
Farmer was
board certified
Board certification is the process by which a physician or other professional demonstrates a mastery of advanced knowledge and skills through written, practical, or simulator-based testing.
Certification bodies
There are more than 25 boards that ...
in
internal medicine and
infectious disease
An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable di ...
.
International work
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.
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.
PIH in Cange was known as
Zanmi Lasante
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 p ...
, 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.
In 1999, the
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level o ...
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.
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.
Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais
Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais is a hospital in Mirebalais that was created by Partners In Health after the 2010 Haiti earthquake
A catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tues ...
opened in 2013 and provides
tertiary care to patients, including oncology and trauma surgery services.
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.
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.
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.
In August 2009, Farmer was named United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti (serving under former U.S. President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...
), in his capacity as Special Envoy.
In December 2012, Farmer was appointed the United Nations Special Adviser to the
Secretary-General
Secretary is a title often used in organizations to indicate a person having a certain amount of authority, power, or importance in the organization. Secretaries announce important events and communicate to the organization. The term is derived ...
on Community Based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti.
In 2020 during the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, Farmer worked with PIH to develop a contact-tracing program in Massachusetts.
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
The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) is a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, US, that seeks to accompany the people of Haiti in their nonviolent struggle for the consolidation of constitutional democracy, j ...
. 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 The Health Impact Fund is a proposed pay-for-performance mechanism that would provide a market-based solution to problems concerning the development and distribution of medicines globally. It would incentivize the research and development of new pha ...
. He also served on the Global Advisory Council of GlobeMed, a student-driven global health organization that works through a partnership model.
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. 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.
Personal life and death
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. They had three children.
In February 2022, Farmer was one of 38 Harvard faculty to sign a letter to ''
The Harvard Crimson'' defending Professor
John Comaroff
John L. Comaroff (born 1 January 1945) is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. He is recognised for his study of African and African-American soc ...
, who had been found to have violated the university's sexual and professional conduct policies. 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.
Farmer died in his sleep from an acute
cardiac event in
Butaro, Rwanda, on February 21, 2022, at the age of 62.
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.
Books
* ''Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History''. Paul Farmer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Farmer first visited the
Western African Ebola virus epidemic site in July 2014, and much of the book is devoted to his personal experiences. Reviewing the outbreak in 2020, he noted that there were almost no Ebola deaths in the U.S. or Europe. By Farmer's account, the West Africa Ebola death toll arose from the longstanding failure to invest in basic health infrastructure which resulted in a lack of proper medical care. Looking at the history of West Africa, Farmer blames the almost five centuries of European rule that resulted in the "rapacious extraction — of rubber latex, timber, minerals, gold, diamonds and human chattel" for the country's inability to provide adequate health care.
* ''AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992, 1993, 2006 edition:
* ''The Uses of Haiti'', Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1994, 2003, 2005 edition:
* ''Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, revised 2001 edition:
* ''Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 2005 edition:
* ''Global Health in Times of Violence'', co-edited with
Barbara Rylko-Bauer and Linda Whiteford, School for Advanced Research Press, 2009 edition:
* ''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),
* ''Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader''. Ed.
Haun Saussy
Caleb Powell Haun Saussy (born February 15, 1960) is University Professor at the University of Chicago.
Research
Saussy's first book, ''The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic'' (Stanford UP, 1993), discussed the tradition of commentary that has grow ...
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010,
* ''Haiti After the Earthquake'', Ed. Abbey Gardner and Cassia van der Hoof Holstein.
PublicAffairs, July 12, 2011,
* ''To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation''. Ed. Jonathan Weigel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
* ''In the Company of the Poor: conversations between Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr.
Gustavo Gutierrez
Gustavo is the Latinate form of a Germanic male given name with respective prevalence in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. It has been a common name for Swedish monarchs since the reign of Gustav Vasa.
It is derived from Gustav /ˈɡʊstɑːv/ ...
''. Ed. Michael Griffin and Jennie Weiss Block. Orbis Books, 2013:
* ''Reimagining Global Health''. Paul Farmer,
Jim Yong Kim,
Arthur Kleinman, and Matthew Basilico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Awards and recognition
Farmer was the recipient of numerous honors, including the
Bronislaw Malinowski Award and the
Margaret Mead Award
Margaret Mead Award is an award in the field of anthropology presented (solely) by the Society for Applied Anthropology from 1979 to 1983 and jointly with the American Anthropological Association afterwards. This award was named after anthropologis ...
from the
Society for Applied Anthropology
The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) is a worldwide organization for the Applied Social Sciences, established "to promote the integration of anthropological perspectives and methods in solving human problems throughout the world; to advocate ...
, the Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award from the
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016.
The AMA's sta ...
, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Fellowship
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher educatio ...
, and, with his
Partners In Health colleagues, the
Hilton Humanitarian Prize. He was a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
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.
* 1993:
MacArthur Fellowship
* 1999: Margaret Mead Award,
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
and
Society for Applied Anthropology
The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) is a worldwide organization for the Applied Social Sciences, established "to promote the integration of anthropological perspectives and methods in solving human problems throughout the world; to advocate ...
, for “Infections and Inequalities”
* 2002: Outstanding International Physician Award (Nathan Davis Award),
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016.
The AMA's sta ...
* 2005:
Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is an American non-profit charitable foundation, established in 1944 by hotel entrepreneur Conrad Hilton. It remained relatively small until his death on January 3, 1979, when it was named the principal beneficia ...
(awarded to Partners In Health)
* 2005: Rudolf Virchow Award, Professional Prize (with Dr. Arachu Castro),
Society for Medical Anthropology
The Organization of Medical Anthropology was formed in 1967 and first met on April 27, 1968, at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA), during which the Medical Anthropology Newsletter was conceived and first publish ...
* 2006: Union Medal, Union Theological Seminary
* 2006: Honorary Doctor of Laws, Princeton University
* 2007: Honorary Doctor of Science, Emory University
* 2007: The Peace Abbey Foundation Courage of Conscience Award
* 2009: Recipient of the Golden Plate Award of the
American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member
Archbishop Desmond Tutu at an awards ceremony at
St. Georges Cathedral in Cape Town, South Africa
* 2009: Honorary Doctor of Letters, Columbia University
* 2010: Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Pennsylvania
* 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
* 2011: Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, Georgetown University
* 2012: Honorary Doctor of Science, Northwestern University
* 2013: Honorary Doctor of Science, American University
* 2013: Sword of Loyola, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
* 2015: Blessed are the Peacemakers Award,
Catholic Theological Union
Catholic Theological Union (CTU) is a private Roman Catholic graduate school of theology in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the largest Catholic graduate schools of theology in the English speaking world and trains men and women for lay and or ...
* 2015:
Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award For Social Entrepreneurship
* 2016: Bronislaw Malinowski Award, Society for Applied Anthropology
* 2018:
Public Welfare Medal,
National Academy of Sciences
* 2018: Elected to the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
* 2019: Honorary Doctor of Laws, McGill University
* 2019: Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity, The National Institute of Social Sciences
* 2019: Rwanda National Order of Outstanding Friendship (Igihango), by the President of Rwanda His Excellency
Paul Kagame
Paul Kagame (; born 23 October 1957) is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who is the 4th and current president of Rwanda since 2000. He previously served as a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Uganda-based rebel ...
* 2020: Recipient of the million dollar
Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture
* 2021:
Aurora Humanitarian, in recognition of his work with PIH
* 2022: Inamori Ethics Prize
References
External links
*
*
Appearanceson
Democracy Now!
Paul Farmer (1959–2022); obituary in Nature
{{DEFAULTSORT:Farmer, Paul
1959 births
2022 deaths
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American non-fiction writers
20th-century American physicians
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American physicians
American anthropologists
American expatriates in Rwanda
American human rights activists
American humanitarians
American infectious disease physicians
Academic journal editors
Duke University alumni
HIV/AIDS activists
Harvard Medical School alumni
Harvard Medical School faculty
MacArthur Fellows
Medical anthropologists
Medical missionaries
Partners in Health
People from Brooksville, Florida
People from North Adams, Massachusetts
Physicians from Massachusetts
Wesleyan University people
Writers from Boston
Members of the National Academy of Medicine