Special Envoy to Haiti Paul Farmer to Speak

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Paul Farmer, the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti, will deliver the keynote address at the 2010 GlobeMed Global Health Summit Friday, March 5, at Northwestern University.

Farmer will speak at 7:30 p.m. to members of GlobeMed, a national network of students committed to educating, training and inspiring the next generation of leaders in global health, in Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., on Northwestern’s Evanston campus. A limited number of free tickets are available to the general public.

An anthropologist, physician and Harvard University professor of global health and social medicine, Farmer recently was appointed U.N. Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti by former President Bill Clinton.

In 1983, Farmer co-founded Partners In Health, an organization that expanded from a one-building clinic in Haiti to an internationally acclaimed nonprofit organization fighting poverty and improving health care in 12 countries. In recent weeks, the organization has taken a leading role in providing medical care to Haiti’s earthquake victims.

A MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner, Farmer is the subject of “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World,” a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Kidder.

The all-day GlobeMed Summit will educate hundreds of students from universities across the country who are passionate about social justice and global health. Farmer’s keynote speech will explore the summit’s main theme: “Ubuntu and Social Justice: Building Global Partnerships for a More Equitable World.”

To request tickets to Farmer’s lecture, e-mail development@globemed.org. For a full schedule of summit events, visit http://www.globemedsummit.org. For more on Farmer’s lecture or about the GlobeMed Summit, call Tracy Fuad at (847) 467-2143 or (612) 807-6228 or e-mail tracy@globemed.org.

The need for kidney transplantation doesn't match our capacity.

Lorenzo Gallon of Feinberg is among those to say doctors should consider trying to reuse more organs to ease a shortage