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For two decades, Paul Farmer has been shaking up conventional wisdom about providing quality healthcare to the poor. International health experts thought it was impossible. He proved them wrong. Farmer will address the social, political and treatment aspects of providing quality healthcare to some of the world's poorest communities during the Hitchcock Foundation's 21st Annual Helmut Schumann Lecture. His talk, "Understanding Social Vulnerability: Implications for Healthful Living," will be November 3rd at 7:30 p.m. in Cook Auditorium, Dartmouth College.

Farmer is a pioneer in community-based treatment strategies for tuberculosis, drug-resistant typhoid, and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. He believes passionately that poverty, inequality and political strife contribute to poor health, and a multifaceted approach to solving these problems is essential. In 2003, he was featured in the book, Mountains Beyond Mountains, by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Kidder, in which Farmer is referred to as the "man who could cure the world." In 1993 Farmer received a MacArthur Fellowship-the socalled "genius" award-in recognition of his work. And in 2000 his nonprofit organization, Partners in Health, received $22.7 million as part of a five-year grant to Harvard Medical School from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Farmer began his lifelong commitment to helping the poor in 1983 when he first went to Haiti as a student. The following year he entered Harvard Medical School. Two years later he helped found the clinic Zanmi Lasante (Creole for Partners in Health), in Haiti, where he is medical director. Farmer has also led an international response to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, working closely with George Soros's Open Society Institute to evaluate TB treatment programs in Russia, Peru, Azerbaijan, Latvia, and Kazakhstan. He has made special efforts to investigate and treat TB among prison populations in those countries.

Farmer is currently the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His most recent book, Pathologies of Power, was published in 2003. In addition to the MacArthur, his awards include the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the American Medical Association's International Physician Award, and the Heinz Award for the Human Condition.

In accepting the Heinz Award, Farmer stated, "we must recognize that we can and should summon our collective resources to save the countless lives that were previously alleged to be beyond our help."