Challenge Grant Donors

A longtime supporter of both the Harvard Medical School Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (GHSM) and its leader, Paul Farmer, MD ’88, PhD ’90, presented HMS with a challenge: raise $4 million within a certain timeframe, and the supporter would match the amount to create two endowed professorships within the department. Farmer, the Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine and a co-founder of Partners In Health, is widely admired and well-known for his efforts to improve the lives and health of poor people around the world—efforts documented in the film “Bending the Arc.”

Eight donors rose to the challenge, enabling HMS to complete its portion of the matching gift. The unique opportunity attracted longtime GHSM supporters, steadfast supporters of HMS giving to global health at Harvard for the first time, and a first-time donor to HMS who was incentivized by the challenge.

“We hope that these endowed professorships will carry Paul’s exceptional legacy forward and draw new donors into the HMS community, particularly in the area of global health,” says the donor who initiated the challenge and chooses to remain anonymous. “There is no area—nor leader—more deserving of our attention and support as we confront the inequities in health care brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Alice and Rodman W. Moorhead III, AB ’66, MBA ’68, are also firm believers in Farmer and his team. Loyal supporters of neuroscience research at HMS, the couple recognized the urgent need to invest in global health and, more specifically, Farmer. “The issue of infectious disease is a major problem worldwide, and Paul has demonstrated his expertise in this field through his work on Ebola, HIV, and other communicable diseases,” says Rod Moorhead, a member of the HMS Board of Fellows and the HMS Discovery Council. Alice Moorhead says, “The pandemic pointed out how woefully inadequate and underfunded public health systems are across the world.”

An infectious disease doctor, Farmer bore witness to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people. His latest book, “Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History,” published last year, details the stories of those afflicted with the disease and describes the systemic health care failures that allowed the virus to spread and kill so rapidly. A lesson from the book, Farmer says, is that the high mortality from deadly pathogens should not simply be attributed to the virulence of the pathogen; rather, we must place an equal amount of blame on the inequalities that exist in medical care.

Farmer’s tireless efforts to rid health systems of these inequalities have resonated with a longtime backer of Farmer’s work who made a gift toward the professorship match. “My family is completely committed to Paul’s vision, his leadership, and his focus on global health equity,” says the donor, who chooses to remain anonymous. “This notion of high-quality health care as a human right is a concept we have signed up for without reservation, and thus supporting Paul and his team in this lifelong ambition is very easy.”

Ronda Stryker, a passionate human rights advocate, expresses a similar sentiment when describing her motivation to participate in the challenge. “Paul and his colleagues work every day to create a healthier and more equitable world. Their selflessness saves lives. I want to reinforce their efforts to strengthen health care systems in marginalized communities,” says Stryker, a member of the HMS Board of Fellows and HMS Advisory Council on Global Health and Service.

Mala Gaonkar, AB ’91, MBA ’96, is interested in supporting the academic discipline around improving those systems, hence her support of Farmer and GHSM. “I met Paul around 15 years ago, and he would discuss ideas around how to improve public health service delivery and how to make that into a real discipline. It’s wonderful to see those ideas not only come to fruition but expand within the department.”

Farmer says he’s humbled and deeply gratified to have the support and confidence of those who made the professorships possible, helping to secure the future of GHSM and advance the department’s work at the intersection of health care and human rights. “This support will allow us to conduct the rigorous research needed to inform our work in the field and ultimately raise the standard of care for the poor. And it will help us to improve, through teaching, the foundations of our future global health leaders.”

One of the new professorships is named the Professorship of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Field of Medical Anthropology. It will be renamed after Farmer’s mentor, Arthur M. Kleinman, AM ’74, MD, a professor of medical anthropology in GHSM, a professor of psychiatry at HMS and Cambridge Health Alliance, and the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, upon his retirement from Harvard University. The other professorship is the Jeffrey Cheah Professorship of Global Health and Social Medicine, named after Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah, whose gift toward the professorship match was his first to HMS.

Cheah is the founder and chairman of the Sunway Group, a Malaysian conglomerate created on the concept of sustainable development. He is also the founder of Sunway University, which is pursuing a healthier planet, better health care delivery, and greater health equity. In this pursuit, Cheah would like to emulate Harvard’s success. “To be the best, we must work with the best and learn from the best, and Harvard and Paul Farmer obviously rank high on the list,” he says.