Professor Given $100K Award

Paul Farmer, the famed Harvard Medical School professor, has been named the Lois Pope LIFE International Achievement Award winner for his work in medicine and public service. The official presentation of the award will take place on Feb. 17 in Miami.

Farmer, the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at HMS, has devoted his life to the study of infectious diseases from a clinical and social perspective.

A press release from the LIFE Foundation praised Farmer for his work in pioneering “novel, community-based treatment strategies for AIDS and tuberculosis in Haiti, Peru, Rwanda, Lesotho and Malawi, among other impoverished nations.”

Lois Pope—philanthropist and founder of the Lois Pope LIFE Foundation—said her foundation tries to give $100,000 every year “to a person who has made a tremendous difference in everyone’s life.”

“He is more than a doctor and a medical expert to me,” Pope said. “He is an advocate of the proposition that we can save lives, understand interrelations with politics, wealth, and disease.”

In 1987, Farmer co-founded Partners in Health, which has since developed into a world-wide health organization that provides free treatment for those in developing countries neglected by their health care systems.

Arthur Kleinman, Farmer’s former Ph.D. dissertation advisor, said Farmer uses his awards “for publicity for the organization and to increase funding,” as he did when he received the $100,000 Austin College Leadership Award in 2007. “Farmer proves that you can do serious research and advocacy as well as having deep values about social justice that inform your research and that also inform practical programme development and clinical work,” said Kleinman, a fellow faculty member in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

Anne E. Becker ’83, another faculty member in the department, said that “the wonderful thing about Paul and the Lois Pope award is that his research and work has been able to shine a light on problems that would have otherwise not have come to the attention of people who want to make a difference.”

The LIFE foundation award is just the most recent accolade for the Harvard Medical School graduate—Farmer received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1993.

Farmer could not be reached for comment yesterday.