In conversation with Paul Farmer
Partners In Health founder Paul Farmer was an inspiring virtual visitor at last week's annual seminar of the Section for Ethics and Health Economics (Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care).
Main content
BCEPS facilitated an engaging conversation with Dr. Farmer about how the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted inequalities in health and wealth around the world. Ninety socially distanced minutes with no technical hitches was a major achievement for all!
The conversation took place as part of the annual seminar of the Section for Ethics and Health Economics (Department for Global Public Health and Primary Care) and was open for virtual participation.
Thematic Background
Responding to the global pandemic has required acknowledging uncomfortable home truths that hinder an effective response: the precariousness in which huge numbers of people live; the relationship between crowded living conditions and poverty; the lack of social protection and access to affordable healthcare. The social circumstances in which we live have been brought to centre stage.
What does this pandemic teach us about the determinants of inequality and its remedies? In the light of COVID-19, what can health economics learn from other disciplines in the quest to reduce inequalities in health and pursue health justice?
Researchers at the Section for Ethics and Health Economics work mainly on priority setting in health, and the seminar participants were largely health economists, clinicians, and ethicists.
The conversation was moderated by BCEPS Director Ole Frithjof Norheim.
Paul Farmer
Paul Farmer (MD, PhD) is Kolokotrones University Professor and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health.
Film Recommendation
Bending the Arc (2017). This film documentary tells the story of how Jim Yong Kim, Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl began a public health revolution in the 1980s by treating patients who had been abandoned by the health establishment.
