Paul Farmer Challenges Dukies to Consider Health and Human Rights

Published April 22, 2008, last updated on February 13, 2013

by Marsha Green

Paul Farmer is considered by many to be a visionary leader, but he holds firmly to the belief that it is not leaders that change the world, but people.  Speaking about health and human rights to a full house at Page Auditorium, Farmer said “The technocrats and their plans are important, but [these movements] won’t succeed without the citizenry behind them … to fight for the rights of everyone.”

Farmer is a Duke alumni and the founder of Partners in Health, a non-profit organization that works to reduce health disparities in nine resource-poor countries. He was at Duke to give the inaugural Global Health Lecture, co-sponsored by the Duke School of Nursing’s Office of Global and Community Health Initiatives and the Duke Global Health Institute.