PIH Co-Founder Jim Yong Kim, MD, PhD wins MacArthur Genius Fellowship
Posted on Oct 13, 2003
Boston, MA – October 7, 2003 – Jim Yong Kim, MD, PhD, a co-founder of Partners In Health, the nonprofit medical assistance organization, has become the second co-founder of the organization to win a MacArthur “genius” fellowship. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the award on Sunday in Chicago. Dr. Paul Farmer, also a co-founder of Partners In Health, received the award in 1993.
On the same day that the award was announced, a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder about the work of Paul Farmer, Jim Kim, and their colleagues at Partners In Health and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, became a national bestseller. Mountains Beyond Mountains, which focuses on their work treating infectious diseases in resource-poor parts of the world, is ranked #14 on The New York Times bestsellers list.
Dr. Kim, a physician-anthropologist, is a Founding Trustee of Partners In Health and Co-Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is also Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Anthropology and Director of the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. An expert in infectious diseases and access to pharmaceuticals in poor populations, he is currently on a leave of absence serving as Senior Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization.
Dr. Kim is the author of Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor, which examines the socioeconomic forces that impact health outcomes of the poor throughout the world. He has recently edited, along with the World Health Organization, the Global Plan to Stop Tuberculosis, the first consensus business plan for the global TB control community. Dr. Kim completed his undergraduate studies at Brown University and received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Partners In Health, a Harvard-affiliated nonprofit organization, provides medical assistance to hundreds of thousands of poor men, women, and children suffering from treatable diseases in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States. Its groundbreaking work in treating tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS has changed the approach that the World Health Organization and other global health care authorities take to the treatment of these and other infectious diseases.
