How A College Class Can Change Your Life - Paul Farmer October 9, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/09/21/Reflections_on_Leadership_for_Social_Change

Dr. Paul Farmer, Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, describes the "unbroken chain of events" that led him to his work in Haiti. He explains that he wanted to be a physician until he took an undergraduate class in medical anthropology, advising current students to "be open to letting a class change your life."

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Part of the inauguration of Jim Yong Kim as 17th president of Dartmouth, the panel discussion features General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Brown University president Ruth Simmons, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, Freddie Mac head Ed Haldeman, and global health pioneer Dr. Paul Farmer talking with professor Sydney Finkelstein about the future of education, business, and social justice. - Dartmouth College

Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer is Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Social Medicine in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where he is also Chair, and a founding director of Partners In Health, an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty.

Dr. Farmers work draws primarily on active clinical practice and focuses on community-based treatment strategies for infectious diseases in resource-poor settings, health and human rights, and the role of social inequalities in determining disease distribution and outcomes. He is Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Womens Hospital (BWH) in Boston, and served for ten years as medical director of a charity hospital, LHôpital Bon Sauveur, in rural Haiti. Along with his colleagues at BWH, in the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at HMS, and in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Malawi, Dr. Farmer has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for AIDS and tuberculosis (including multidrug-resistant tuberculosis).

Dr. Farmer and his colleagues have successfully challenged the policymakers and critics who claim that quality health care is impossible to deliver in resource-poor settings.