A Record of Leadership

DGHE itself grew out of work started by Drs. Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim more than twenty years ago, when they joined with colleagues to open a medical clinic in desperately impoverished rural Haiti. Their goal was to bring the best in modern medicine to those most in need. Their premise was that every life is worth saving. From these beginnings, Farmer and Kim founded Partners In Health, a private charity which has grown to provide top quality medical care and social services to over one million poor patients in Haiti and to thousands more in Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Malawi, Lesotho and inner city Boston.

Today, Farmer and Kim are widely considered among the world’s foremost leaders in global health. In 2005, they were chosen by US News & World Report as among America’s Top 25 Leaders, just one in a string of accolades for them and for Partners In Health. Together with their colleagues, they have helped start a worldwide movement founded on unprecedented hope for saving lives and improving the health of the destitute sick.

Changing Global Policy, Saving Lives

The impact of Farmer and Kim’s 20 year partnership can be counted not only in lives saved, but in sea changing contributions to the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and other epidemics in the developing world. They and their colleagues have proven to the world that even the toughest diseases can be treated in the most difficult settings, and they have changed global health policies in the process. A pioneering approach to treating deadly multi-drug resistant tuberculosis literally changed standards for treating millions with the disease worldwide. In Haiti, they were among the first anywhere to provide antiretroviral treatment for impoverished AIDS patients, paving the way for today’s efforts to provide care for millions in Africa and other poor nations.

Breaking New Ground

The newest phase in the evolution of their work, DGHE represents a groundbreaking commitment for a major US teaching hospital. In addition to directly providing medical care in poor communities worldwide, DGHE’s mission is to train the next generation of global health leaders and to conduct medical research that will change global practices and policies. The program has attracted significant interest from established physicians who want to join our ranks; young doctors seeking training; and other medical centers that want to model their own programs on the DGHE.

Today, DGHE boasts among its faculty a cadre of highly respected physicians with extensive experience in impoverished settings. Many are long-time colleagues, who, with Paul Farmer and Jim Kim, have worked in locales as varied as squatter settlements in rural Haiti to the halls of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. They are key contributors to a record of innovation and success in treating disease in impoverished settings that has challenged—and changed—world thinking on the health of the poor. To a one, they have made the fight to improve the health of the destitute sick their life’s work. Their battlefields lie in Haiti, Rwanda, Peru, Malawi, Siberia, Lesotho and Roxbury—wherever there are patients in need.

DGHE faculty members work closely with Partners In Health, with the faculty of both the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and of the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health, and with a range of other prestigious advocacy, academic and policy-making organizations.

A Pivotal Time

DGHE and its physicians stand at the center of a pivotal moment in global health. The stakes are higher than ever, measured both in the magnitude of human suffering and in the opportunity to leverage significant new resources to alleviate that suffering.  In recent years, the world has made an unprecedented commitment to fighting diseases of the poor, in no small part building on the success of efforts by Paul Farmer, Jim Kim and their colleagues. Where once there was little or no funding, new sources like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief are together providing billions of dollars to save millions of lives. At the same time, at universities nationwide, undergraduates and graduate students in medicine, public health and other disciplines are showing an unprecedented interest in global health, clamoring for training that incorporates the best available knowledge and reflects the highest standards of teaching. DGHE and its physicians stand poised to lead the growth of this new field that has ignited the world’s urgent attention.