Published March 17, 2008, last updated on March 28, 2013
Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, will be the distinguished lecturer for the Inaugural Annual Global Health Lecture at Duke on Monday, April 21, 2008 from 6:30 – 8 p.m. in Duke University’s Page Auditorium. The title of his talk is “Rethinking Health and Human Rights.” The Annual Global Health Lecture is co-sponsored by the Duke University School of Nursing, Office of Global and Community Health Initiatives (OGACHI) and the Duke Global Health Institute. The lecture will be open to the public. Tickets are required and available free of charge at the door on a first-come, first-served basis, beginning at 5:30 p.m. on April 21. Farmer is the founding director of Partners in Health (PIH), a Boston-based charitable organization dedicated to providing “direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.” PIH, whose work began in Haiti, has expanded its reach to include Lesotho, Malawi, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, and the USA, with support to projects in Mexico and Guatemala. In concert with his active and extensive work with PIH around the globe, Farmer maintains an active practice in Infectious Diseases and as Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He holds a Duke undergraduate degree and earned his MD and PhD from Harvard University. He is the subject of the Pulitzer Prizewinner Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Random House, 2003). In 2004, Kidder’s book was chosen by Duke as the summer reading for the incoming class of 2008. The Office of Global and Community Health Initiatives in the School of Nursing and the Duke Global Health Institute are committed to addressing health disparities locally and abroad through research, education, and service. This inaugural forum will be an annual event which will bring some of the world’s leaders and scientists in global health to the campus to spotlight how their work makes a difference among those most vulnerable.
