Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer is the founding Director of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that works in Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and the United States on issues of public health. Dr. Farmer is a medical anthropologist whose work draws primarily on active clinical practice: he divides his clinical time between the Brigham and Women's Hospital (Division of Infectious Disease) and a small charity hospital in rural Haiti. His work in anthropology and in social medicine has focused on diseases disproportionately afflicting the poor, and the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change, which Farmer runs along with his colleagues in the Department of Social Medicine, has pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies for sexually transmitted infections (including HIV), drug-resistant typhoid, and tuberculosis in resource-poor settings.